


Treacherous Slope

by maxette



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Barebacking, Boys Are Dumb, Canon compliant through 3A, Communication Failure, Fastest Build, First Time, Happy pack!, Intercrural Sex, Kissing, M/M, Rimming, Romance, That's right I said vampires, Vampires, bottom!Derek, has happened TO him, he's pretty bad at taking action himself, kind of crack because who is this oblivious?, like the actual action not what he wants or talks about doing, my only defense is that all of his canon romantic stuff, oblivious!Stiles, poor boo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:13:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maxette/pseuds/maxette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek kisses Stiles a lot and also there are vampires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **General:** What is this? Where did it come from? Why are we here? ?? I don’t know. I hope you’re having a good day.
> 
> I wrote this with the intention of it being all about the first part of the summary and the second part just snuck up on me. Big debt is owed to _Buffy_ from which I flagrantly stole most vampire logistics… and some plot points, too. YEAH! Fusion or plagiarism? One of many wonderful questions the fic writer gets to ask. Smaller debt also owed to _Supernatural_ and _The Vampire Diaries._
> 
> And Taylor Swift who wrote the lyrics that inspired this title. I made [a fanmix](http://8tracks.com/maxette/treacherous-slope) if you want to listen to that . . . And if you want to download this guy to your reader, you can get something of a cover over [at my tumblr](http://maxette.tumblr.com/post/63659682915/lord-its-a-fic-and-a-beautiful-cover-have-you). Oh the things I'll do to feel like I'm working without having to actually write. 
> 
> **Warning and apologies:** Big bad is lame. :( I really just wanted this to be about kissing, I don’t know what happened. I guess, in the end, the big bad is really the boys’ communication skills.
> 
> Despite what the show told you, and this fic reiterates, kissing a person is not a good way to help them through a panic attack. Please don’t do that in real life! But, I decided, in the Teen Wolf world, where there are werewolves, and no homophobia, kissing is super effective!
> 
> Where’s Peter? I don’t know, maybe he’s dead. Hopefully Gerard is, too.

The first time it happens is at the end of a big fight with some vampire drones. A bunch of them ambushed the pack at the warehouse (or, as Stiles will always refer to it in writing, the  _werehouse_ ). The werehouse used to be a Costco, a massive, empty, freestanding concrete building on the edge of town. The wolves can train there without fear of disturbing anybody or breaking anyone else’s property. It’s very useful, though it’s also become a very likely place for bad guys to find them all together. Derek bought it for Scott before he left Beacon Hills with Cora and sent him the deed in the mail like the antisocial weirdo he was.

The pack is defeating the drones easily as ever, but three of them get ahold of Stiles. Now, Stiles isn’t just the brains anymore, okay? He’s got a little brawn, at least, and he can handle himself against young vampires, who are barely stronger than they were as humans, just fine—one-on-one, anyway, but three is a lot more than one and they take him by surprise.

Two of them are holding Stiles steady and the third grabs him by the hair to bare his neck. Stiles can feel her moist, cold breath and the needle-sharp press of teeth before Derek rips her away from him and stakes her. The two holding Stiles immediately let him go in favor of running, but Derek grabs them, holds them by the collars of their polo shirts in one hand and stakes them with a quick one-two.

The fight is winding down around them. Stiles looks at Derek and starts to smile and thank him, but Derek’s expression brings him up short. He’s not wolfed out, but his eyes are blue and intense, dark and bright as a lightning storm, and laser focused on Stiles. Derek’s looking at him like he’s prey.

Why? Stiles really thought they’d moved beyond this to solid same team territory. Is he—could Stiles be turning into a vampire? He touches his throat where the vampire nipped him, even though he  _knows_  it doesn’t work like that, and he feels fine and normal, and, as expected, his hand comes back with the thinnest smear of blood.

“Derek, what—”

But before he can finish his sentence, Derek charges at him and Stiles turns and runs without a second thought. It’s useless, of course, and Stiles suspects he only makes it as far as he does, to one of the massive support pillars several yards away, because Derek lets him.

Derek catches him around the shoulders and spins him around, pressing him against the pillar. His huge hands move down, wrapping around Stiles’ arms completely and lifting him off the ground.

“Derek,” Stiles says, as calmly as he can manage, wondering now if this isn’t in response to some kind of wolfsbane. “What are you doing? It’s me, Stiles. I’m your friend?”

“Stiles!” Derek says and he starts to suffocate him.

Or at least that’s the only reasonable explanation Stiles can come up with for what he would otherwise call a kiss. If this were anyone else pressing his mouth to Stiles’, he’d say he was getting kissed good and proper. But Derek would never kiss him, so this has to be something else.

He’s not doing a very good job suffocating him. Stiles considers pulling away from his mouth to tell him so, suggest he change his technique, but Stiles doesn’t actually want to be suffocated, so instead he puts his arm across Derek’s shoulders, and threads his other hand through Derek’s hair, and opens his mouth to Derek’s probing tongue.

Yep, that’s the only reason—like he tells Scott later: it might have looked like he was kissing Derek back, but he was really just saving his own life. Derek wasn’t even kissing him, so there was no kiss to return!

After some time—Stiles really has no idea how long, but it is  _probably_  not the longest he’s ever gone with an erection and absolutely _no_  friction to help—Derek starts slowing down with gentle, closed mouth kisses.

“Don’t—” Derek says, and kisses him again. “—do that—” Another kiss. “—again.”

_Don’t do what?_ Stiles thinks, desperately, but Derek has a look on his face now like his brain will explode if Stiles questions him so he just says, “I won’t.”

Derek nods and steps back, setting Stiles back on his feet. Then he turns and walks out of the werehouse without another word to anybody. Cora quietly follows him, leaving the rest of them to clean all the vamp dust out of the werehouse, which they _always_ do, actually. Fucking Hales.

Lydia and Allison mostly don’t help, either, but they order pizza, so he forgives them. It’s nice to sit on the tumbling mats after all of the fighting and just eat and talk for a while. Usually they brainstorm how to find the vampires that are responsible for all of this, or lure them out of hiding, but tonight everyone is quiet and staring at Stiles.

Finally Scott says, “So . . . how long has that been going on?”

For a split second Stiles considers pretending he doesn’t know what Scott’s talking about, but his whole body is thrumming with exactly what Scott is talking about, so it’s hard to lie.

“That?  _That?_  There is no  _that_  except what you saw happen just now. So it’s been going on exactly how long—that—happened.”

“Exactly how long Derek was  _kissing you_?”

“He was not!”

“Um—“ several of them say, on top of each other.

“That was—not what it looked like. It was—Derek was—I  _know_  kissing and that was—“

They all stare at him. Stiles’ mouth is hanging open, and the end of his sentence is not coming out of it, but he refuses to close it, because he  _knows_  what  _that_  was. He does.

“—a threat.”

“A threat,” Scott says dubiously.

“Mm-hm.” Stiles takes a bite of pizza. “It was an action motivated by anger and violence.”

“That sounds like rape,” Lydia puts in.

Scott sits up straight and looks about a second away from wolfing out and calling Derek out for pistols at dawn. “Are you saying he  _rape_  kissed you?”

“No!”

“It didn’t  _look_  rapey,” says Danny. “It looked kind of sweet and sexy, really.”

“Please just stop talking about it! Stop thinking about it. It has never happened before and it will never happen again, so essentially it never happened. Right?”

“Not right.” Lydia pats his knee.

They all seem to accept that Stiles is a sad boy who literally wouldn’t know a kiss if it hit him in the mouth and move on to other topics of conversation.

Later, though, after he drives Stiles home on his bike (the Jeep is missing and Stiles really doesn’t want to think about what might be happening to it right now), Scott brings it up again, grabbing Stiles’ arm to keep him from going into the house.

“What was the kiss—”

“Not a—!”

“What was the  _threat_ —threatening you to do?”

“Um—not get hurt, I guess.”

Scott’s quiet for a few moments. “So he was freaked out that you almost got bitten and he reacted by . . . licking your mouth . . . and you think that means he hates you?”

“It was an accident! Heat of the moment! An inappropriate physical response to strong emotional stimulus!”

“I thought it was a threat?”

“I thought you weren’t thinking about it!”

Scott laughs. “Since when do I do what you tell me to?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vampires were unexpected. Werewolves versus vampires are usually the way it goes in books and movies, sure, but this is real life and werewolves at least make sense. They age and their bodies make and use energy and Deaton’s taught Stiles a lot about how their superior sight and smell and hearing work biologically and yeah: Stiles has fully processed the werewolf thing—werelizards, werefoxes, werepandas, probably—sure! Wouldn’t have surprised him.

When Stiles saw the girl on the side of the road a few weeks back, of course he wondered if she was a werewolf, even as he pulled his car over like his Dad told him never to do. She was pale and skinny, blonde hair wild and tangled down her back, wearing nothing but a white dress—seriously _nothing_ —no bra, no panties—that was obvious, not that he let himself _look_ —no shoes, even. It was obvious that she was either going to attack him or she really needed some help. He didn’t want to get attacked—it was Monday night after an extra long lacrosse practice and he was exhausted—but he couldn’t _not_ help her if _she_ had just been attacked, right?

He probably should have texted Scott where he was and what he was doing before he unlocked the door for her, though, because she immediately punched him in the temple and knocked him out.

When he came to, Stiles was striped down to his briefs and sitting on a rough wooden chair, ankles tied to the chair legs and his wrists tied behind his back. His arms had gone numb, but his shoulder blades were aching, pulled tight and pressed together.

He looked around the room. He was underground somewhere. It was dark, the only light coming through skinny, barred windows near the ceiling. It smelled like rotting wood and peanuts. Then the blonde girl filled his field of vision, smiling at him—or she might have just been baring her teeth. It was hard to tell when they were all so sharp and her forehead had such brutal angry lines.

“Ah, I wondered if you’d wake before we started. Congratulations, human,” she said, her voice unexpectedly high pitched. “You shall serve as a retribution. An eye for an eye.”

She stepped back and stood with two more girls with equally blonde hair and scary faces.

Stiles groaned. “An eye for—what—eye?”

“Derek Hale took our sister and so we take you.”

Stiles last thought before he passed out again was, _Of fucking course_. Only Derek could get Stiles kidnapped from halfway around the world, or wherever the hell he was now. Derek could step on a landmine on the way to the bathroom.

The vampires’ plan seemed to be to slowly bleed him to death. Why do it slowly Stiles had no idea, but it was his only glimmer of hope that he might get out of this, so he didn’t argue. They were very good at it. He knew from one late night’s research down the rabbit hole that exsanguination usually killed you in a few hours or less and whatever they did lasted from one sunset to another, making him steadily weaker—thirsty and dizzy, unable to concentrate or really fall asleep. He asked if this was how you turned someone into a vampire and one of the them replied, “Oh, no. You don’t deserve it, puppy lover,” so that was a relief.

It turned out they were keeping him in some random house on Chestnut Street, having turned the family that had lived there before into vampire drones and conscripting them to keep watch. It was the three teenagers in the family not showing up at school that made Lydia wonder if the family was involved. Scott and Allison went to the house just to get some information and ended up killing them and finding Stiles in the basement. The blondes escaped, of course.

Stiles went to the hospital and got a blood transfusion. Melissa observed him overnight and in the morning declared him lucky he came in when he did, but fully recovered. The only long-term injury of the kidnapping was his Jeep. It wasn’t at the house or on the highway where he’d pulled over or anywhere anyone had seen it. Presumably the blonde trio had it and he could only hope it wasn’t gone forever in their effort to destroy evidence.  

After that Deaton explained a little about vampires. A vampire was a reanimated human corpse on the outside and one of two things on the inside: an intelligent demon or a mindless drone, with no intentions beyond what their masters, usually their demon sires, told them to do. Deaton was vague about what “demon” actually meant, but they were definitely evil bad creatures from “hell” which may or may not have been a physical place and may or may not have been connected to a complementary “heaven” which may or may not have anything to do with what it said in the Bible. Deaton was also vague on what made a vampire a demon or a drone; it had something to do, perhaps, with the strength of the human mind they had replaced.

Demon or drone, they were all really strong and really fast, and they lived forever on the blood of mammals unless killed by sunlight, decapitation, or a wooden stake through the heart. They turned into superfine dust when they died, exploding with a burst of heat and a strangely meaty smell.

“What happens to the human that used to live in the body?” Lydia asked.

“They’re dead,” Deaton said. “They’re gone.”

That definitely made the idea of killing them easier. They weren’t humans with enhanced abilities and violent instincts, like werewolves—they were monsters, full stop.

 

 

* * *

 

 

No one knew how get ahold Derek directly, but Deaton had some kind of druid phone tree that would track him down eventually.

Four days later, Derek and Cora showed up at the werehouse, very tan and very smelly. Cora’s hair was in dreadlocks. Derek’s was buzzed shorter than Stiles’ used to be and he’d gone way beyond beard into solid mountain man territory. “We were camping,” was all either of them would say. They were both still way hotter than anyone had a right to be.

“I was kidnapped and almost murdered thanks to you, Derek,” Stiles said by way of hello. “Explain yourself!”

Derek explained that he killed the trio’s sister to stop her from killing a cabin full of elementary school kids on a field trip at Yosemite National Park which, okay, Stiles really can’t fault him for even if it did put some crazy blondes on their case. Though in the six weeks since Stiles was kidnapped, they haven’t actually seen the blondes again. Even Mr. Argent can’t find a hint of where they are.

Freshly made vampires keep coming after them instead. They’re all the mindless drone type, resolutely following the trio’s orders—which is, inevitably, to attack the pack. At first they try to capture a few with every fight. They try interrogating them. The pack, Stiles’ dad, and Mr. Argent all give their best effort—good cop/bad cop, bargaining, torture—but the drones don’t seem capable of speaking much at all, never mind tell them anything useful. It’s pretty clear the trio doesn’t feel the same kind of loyalty, so there’s no leverage in keeping them alive. After a few attempts, Scott tells them to stop taking prisoners.

They always defeat the drones easily, which makes Stiles think that killing the pack isn’t the trio’s goal. Maybe their goal is to get his dad fired again because there’s yet another serial killer in Beacon Hills and no normal investigation to be made. Or maybe it’s to drive the pack all crazy with guilt because the trio keeps turning kids from their high school. Stiles doesn’t kill Noah Hacker, a freshman Stiles knew a little from track—he kills the undead remains of Noah’s body—but it sure feels like he kills him, as he stabs a stake through his brand new letterman jacket and he’s covered in the ash of Noah’s burnt up body. It was Noah’s bones and skin and heart Stiles wiped off his face.

He should ask Allison to train him on the crossbow. She spends most of her downtime carving arrowheads out of wood, which sounds like a really great way to keep his hands busy, and she gets to kill vamps from a distance. She never gets dust on her. Actually, Stiles is the only one who manages to get it _all over him_ , but that’s—whatever, it’s fine.

In the quiet aftermath of the fight tonight, the werehouse is too hot, not enough air, and he walks outside and makes himself not look for Derek as he goes. It’s been a few days since he _threatened_ Stiles and Derek hasn’t tried anything like that again—hasn’t touched him, talked to him, or even looked at him, really. Not that Stiles expected him to—or wanted to—or even thought about it except when he did, you know, randomly. He isn’t obsessing. That’s whatever, too—totally fine.

Stiles wonders if anyone had been surprising Noah Hacker with kisses. He wonders if Noah’s parents know he died. With vampires, it’s even odds that the demon will possess the body after it’s buried, at a morgue, or before it’s even discovered. He hadn’t heard that Noah had died at school, but at this point so many kids are missing and turning up dead that they don’t announce it anymore. If they had a memorial assembly for each of them, there wouldn’t be time for classes.

Stiles slides down the wall, his shirt riding up and the cold, rough stucco scraping against his back. It feel good, a little self-flagellation. Noah was killed by vampires who wanted Stiles dead first. It’s not hard to see how this could have been prevented.

“Hey.”

Stiles looks up to find Derek standing next to him.

“Want me to leave you alone?”

Anyone else, Stiles would have said yes. That’s scary enough that Stiles almost says yes anyway. But Derek looks so hopeful, and Stiles wants him so much, that he says, “Stay.”

Derek drops down beside him close enough that their arms are touching. Derek is always so warm.

“This is my fault,” Stiles whispers.

“No.”

“Yes! If I had just let them kill me—”

“That was never an option, Stiles—”

“If they had just gotten their retribution, they would have left! None of these people would have died.”

“Or maybe you wouldn’t have been enough to make up for their sister. Maybe they would have decided they liked it here. Beacon Hills is a beacon now, remember? And vampires have to eat.”

Stiles shrugs.

“If anything, it’s my fault. I’m the one who pissed them off in the first place.”

“Derek, _no_. The vamp you killed forced your hand! You couldn’t let her go after a bunch of kids. Her sisters are the ones killing everybody.”

Derek nods. “It’s their fault, isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“It’s not your fault, is it?”

Stiles laughs and covers his face with his hands. He walked right into that one. “It just _sucks_. I want to find them and kill them and stop this.”

Derek puts his arm around Stiles shoulder, pulls him against his big, hard body, and presses a kiss to the top of his head. That was something no one had done to him since his mom died.

“Me, too,” Derek whispers against Stiles’ forehead. “We will.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Derek says firmly.

“You know, you’re a much better at alpha stuff now that you’re a beta again.”

“It’s easier now that everyone and everything isn’t clambering for attention in my head. It’s easier to focus on what’s important.”

See? That proves Stiles’ point. If you’d asked Stiles what was important to Derek when Derek was an alpha, Stiles would have said power. And that’s part of being an alpha—a powerful pack is a safe pack and Scott’s once-in-a-million-years strength of character hasn’t hurt their reputation at all—but encouragement and confidence in the pack is part of it, too. That’s what’s really important to Derek and he’s totally fucking great at it.

Stiles turns to look at him and finds their faces very close together. Derek searches Stiles face for a moment and then leans in and kisses him. Stiles sees this one coming, but that doesn’t make it any less impossible that it’s happening. The last one wasn’t really a kiss and, Stiles realizes, this isn’t really a kiss, either—it’s comfort.

The other night Stiles leaned back and accepted all the threats Derek wanted to give him, but tonight? Tonight Stiles is going to actively _take_ this comfort.

He pulls away from Derek, but only long enough to reposition them. He sits up until he’s kneeling, throws one leg over one of Derek’s and then presses his knee down the crotch seam of Derek’s jeans, surprised to already feel the hard outline of his cock.

“Does my penitence turn you on?”

Derek’s cock jerks at that. “Your vocabulary turns me on,” Derek growls, and captures his mouth again.

Stiles hasn’t done a lot of kissing in his life, but he’s determined to be good at it right now—for about the first two minutes. Stiles is grinding down on Derek’s thigh, which is plenty of stimulation, even through two layers of denim, as he rubs Derek’s cock with his knee, and he’s not ashamed to say he’s already close to the edge. Well, he’s a little ashamed—but Derek’s close, too, if the way he’s gasping in breaths and erratically jerking his hips against Stiles is anything to go by, and that’s so hot that he has to hope his own quick desperation is hot to Derek, too. Their kisses are sloppy now, just open mouths moving over each other.

It doesn’t occur to him that he might not want to come in his underwear until it’s too late. Derek’s eyes widen in surprise as Stiles moans out his release and oh my _god_ , Derek isn’t close, wasn’t expecting that, and Stiles is _mortified_. He ducks down and hides his face against Derek’s chest. 

“Oh, no, you did exactly right,” Derek says. “I’m right behind you, Stiles, so—”

He doesn’t even care if Derek’s just trying to make him feel better; he’s going to make sure that’s true now. Stiles kisses him with all of the finesse he’s got and reaches down to fondle Derek’s cock through his jeans. Stiles is going to make Derek come as soon as possible, and without a hand on his bare cock, because that’s how they’re _doing_ it tonight.

Derek lasts long enough that Stiles is close to getting hard again himself, but fast enough that Stiles feels a little better.

_Yeah!_ Stiles thinks, as they cool down. _Both of us have jizz in our pants. I’m awesome._

“Thanks,” he says.

Derek breathes out a laugh. “No problem.”

“You’re a good friend.”

Without warning, Derek lifts Stiles off him and stands them both up on their feet, so quickly that Stiles’ head is spinning. Derek steps several feet away from him and Stiles falls forward, his balance and sense of gravity all messed up. Derek catches him around the waist.

“You are—fast,” Stiles says. He feels drunk. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m just fine, buddy,” Derek spits out like the words were burning the inside of his mouth, and stalks off.

Standing alone in the back alley Stiles is suddenly very cold and very uncomfortable. He has to change his briefs before his come dries and peeling them off becomes a very painful process. It’s lucky that he’s still in work out clothes and he has clean pants in his bag.

Later that night, when Stiles is having breakfast for dinner at IHOP with Scott and Isaac, Scott says, “Soooo. Was Derek threatening you tonight, too?”

“Comforting,” Stiles corrects him around a mouthful of pancakes. He clears his throat. “So you could hear that, huh?”

Both of them roll their eyes at him.

“You know, Allison kisses me to comfort me, too,” Isaac says. “Because she’s my girlfriend and she cares about me.”

Scott nods. “Just because a kiss _means_ something doesn’t mean it’s not a kiss.”

Stiles ignores them. They don’t get it.

The thing is, if the kissing were _kissing_ , Stiles would be thrilled. It would be great if the kissing came with talking and cuddling and, oh, say, spending any time with Derek _at all_ , when Scott hasn’t alpha ordered him to teach Stiles how to throw a punch or overpower someone after they pin you on your back. It would be kind of a dream come true—quite literally, thank you very much subconscious. The night he watched _The Cider House Rules_ Stiles dreamt of going apple picking with Derek. That was all they did the whole dream—walking arm in arm through an orchard, picking apples, and talking about baking a pie.

But instead the kissing comes with _nothing_. The only explanation is that Derek is kissing him to make a point. Various points. That’s all it is. It’s a good idea, really, because Stiles is a teenager. Nothing gets a point across like giving him an erection.

“You’re enjoying it, though, right?” Scott says. “You’d tell him to stop if you didn’t _like_ the—uh—threatening and the comforting?”

“Yeah!” Stiles takes a long drink of orange juice, considering. “Wait, is that weird? Am I taking advantage of him?”

“I hope so,” says Isaac.


	2. Chapter 2

The third time it happens Stiles has chocolate pudding on his cheek.

It’s Thursday night after training. Most everybody’s gone home, but it’s Dad and Melissa’s date night, and Scott and Isaac’s bro night—which Stiles would be bitter about, but they instituted it because literally every other night is Scott and _Stiles’_ bro night. He can let Isaac have this one—so Stiles just stays at the werehouse. There’s a little kitchen that used to be the break room when it was still a Costco and Stiles and Derek are sitting at the wobbly little table they set up in there. Derek doesn’t have a good excuse to be hanging around, reading Stiles’ copy of _Dubliners,_ purloined from his backpack, but Stiles doesn’t want him to leave, so he doesn’t bring it up. Stiles is doing an econ problem set, trying to ignore how close Derek’s ankle is to his—not touching but _almost—_ and eating a pudding cup.

Stiles takes a bite and feels Derek fidget against his ankle. Stiles looks up just in time to watch Derek lean across the table, stick out his tongue, lick Stiles’ face from the edge of his mouth to his dimple, and calmly sit back down. Stiles raises an eyebrow at Derek who appears not to be looking at him, but is smiling at _Dubliners_ wider than Stiles believes any of those horribly depressing stories could inspire.

“What?” Stiles says.

“Chocolate,” Derek says, gesturing to his own face where he licked Stiles’.

Stiles scoops some pudding with his finger and spreads it across his lower lip.

Derek takes a deep breath, turning a page of the book. Then he launches himself back over the table and sucks Stile’s lip into his mouth with perfect werewolf aim. As he pulls back, Stiles smears what’s left of his pudding across his cheek, over his earlobe, and down his throat. Stiles shudders as Derek dutifully licks his way across Stiles’ face, his earlobe into his mouth and sucking along the trail of pudding to his Adam’s apple, scraping him with stubble as he goes.

Derek pulls back, but Stiles finds he has Derek’s shirt held in his fist, stretching the fabric tight across his shoulders. Stiles unclenches his hand and smoothes Derek’s shirt back into position. Derek sits down again

He clears his throat. “All clean?”

Derek nods and licks his lips, breathing hard even as he coolly looks back down at Stiles’ book. Stiles can’t help but lick his lips in response, wondering if he’s tasting the same as what Derek’s tasting, and wanting _so much_ to lick Derek’s mouth for himself to see for sure.  

He looks down at his homework, but the words are meaningless, might as well be switching places in the sentences for all he’s comprehending. He’s too geared up. He needs to come. His skin is almost painfully sensitive as he runs his fingers over the trail Derek took with his mouth.

God, he can’t do this here. Even though Derek was the one to get him in this predicament, it feels inappropriate to finish himself off right in front him when Derek clearly needs no such finale. Maybe it didn’t even turn him on. Maybe licking is some kind of wolf instinct, like cleaning your young.

Stiles gets up and walks to the bathroom as casually as he can. He goes straight to the handicapped stall and reaches back to close the door behind him and feels a hot, hard body under his hand instead. Before Stiles can turn to look at him, Derek comes closer, guiding Stiles’ hand around his waist and pressing himself against Stiles’ back. _Oh_ —Derek was definitely turned on. Derek’s cock is hard down his right pant leg, straining against his jeans. Derek moves his fingertips lightly across the trail his mouth took before. Stiles whimpers helplessly at the sensation, especially as Derek presses harder down his chest, down his stomach, to his cock through his khakis.

Derek’s hand trails back up and hovers over Stiles’ belt buckle.

“You know how to open a belt, Derek, come on,” he says. That permission seems to open the floodgates. Derek rips open Stiles’ belt, unbuttons his pants, wrenches down the zipper, and pulls his pants and briefs down his legs at once. He strokes Stiles with a slow, firm motion as he pulls his own pants down.

“Can I—” Derek says, finishing his sentence by brushing his cock along Stiles’ ass, which—no. Stiles is not going to lose his anal sex virginity in a dirty bathroom stall on a Wednesday evening. No way. Stiles has done a lot of research on the subject and he knows exactly how it’s going down _if_ it ever does: Derek is going to rim him for about five hours, then he’s going to open him up with a whole bottle of lube, and _then_ Derek’s cock might get involved.

“You think you can just stuff it right in and—”

“No!” Derek says. “I didn’t mean—can I just—” He runs his thumb in between Stiles’ ass checks, from the top to his taint, and back up.

“Intercrural sex?” Stiles says. “Like the ancient Greeks?”

Derek laughs. “I love it when you talk dirty. Yeah, _intercrural_.”

“Sure.” That sounds hot, actually, and not at all painful. “Yeah. Let me just—“ Stiles licks his hand and reaches back to slick up Derek’s cock a little. A steady stream of precome is dripping from Derek’s slit. Stiles lets some pool in his spit-wet hand and strokes it up, slicking up his cock. “Is that good?”

“That’s so good,” Derek says. “That’s perfect.”

He guides Derek’s cock to his ass, revels in the feeling of his cheeks closing over Derek’s fat mushroom head. Stiles presses his hands against the wall and leans forward as Derek slowly presses his cock along Stiles’ asshole until he reaches his balls, pressing wetly against that sensitive skin. They groan together at the feeling. Stiles experimentally squeezes his ass and Derek chokes out a whimper, pressing his mouth against Stiles’s shoulder.

Derek thrusts against him and jerks Stiles off in synch, stroking his cock in one hand and expertly fondling his sac in the other. He’s sucking and biting at Stiles’ throat, too, and Stiles has never felt like this before—pure pleasure coming from so many erogenous zones and he’s not lifting a finger to make it happen. Not being able to see Derek makes it all the more intense. It could be anyone back there, any two hands making him feel like this, but—it’s Derek, his scruff against his back, his smell all around him. Stiles knows that without a doubt—every blood cell rushing through his veins knows that. It’s all he can do to keep his knees from buckling.

First Derek starts to lose his rhythm and then he starts trembling against Stiles back and Stiles knows he’s close. He leans his head back to bring their mouths together and kisses him. “I’m right there with you,” he says against his mouth. “You’re so good—go, Derek, let go.”

Derek groan, licking into Stiles mouth, and follows orders, thrusting forward hard and coming with a hot splash against Stiles’ balls. He pulls out of the kiss, panting, pressing his forehead against Stiles’ shoulder, but he doesn’t stop stroking Stiles’ cock, until, not long after, Stiles comes, too.

He collapses against Derek’s chest, but Derek is ready for that and holds him up easily, raising one leg to give him something of a seat and closing his arms around Stiles’ chest. He’s so sleepy now he could fall asleep right here.

Derek rubs at Stiles’ cock head and Stiles moans. “Nooo,” he moans. “My refractory period is short, but I can’t—”

Derek kisses the side of his head. “No, I just want—” He finishes with a sucking noise and Stiles opens his eyes to see Derek _eating Stiles’ come_ off his fingers.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Stiles says. He didn’t think people did that outside of porn. Stiles didn’t even really get into it when people did it _in_ porn, but watching Derek do it is patently hot. Derek turns to get a good look at Stiles’ expression and then Stiles can feel him laughing against his back.

“It tastes like you,” he says, shrugging.

Stiles turns in Derek’s hold so they’re facing each other, closes his arms around Derek’s waist, and runs his tongue across Derek’s chest, salty and clean. “You taste like—mmm.”

Derek pressed a kiss to Stiles’ sweaty forehead. “I want to stay like this all night.”

“Homework,” Stiles says, hating his life. Six AP classes was too much to take at once, but Scott was really into it—if they passed enough tests, they could basically skip a year of college and many years of student loan debt. Plus they’d thought nothing would be trying to kill them this semester. Stupid.

“Can you hold yourself up?” Derek says.

Stiles lets go of his monkey grip on Derek and tries standing up straight, finding himself pretty steady. “I’m okay,” he says and Derek crouches down, immediately taking Stiles’ soft cock into his mouth and then moves right along to Stiles’ balls, lifting them up and—sucking off his own come, Stiles realizes, all the way across his ass. It’s still too soon for him to get it up again, but his cock makes a valiant, almost painful, effort.

Derek brings up Stiles’ pants as he stands, pulling the elastic band of his briefs over his ass with a snap. He gestures for Stiles to take ahold of his own pants. Stiles does, but doesn’t make an effort to close them or really move at all as Derek makes quick work of redressing himself.

Derek gives him a little smile, says, “ _Now_ you’re all clean,” and sashays back out of the bathroom.

Oh, right. Threatening, comforting, and now—cleaning: weird werewolf scenting/tasting/mouth-cleaning. Derek kisses him for all sorts of reasons.

And none of them have anything to do with Stiles.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The fourth time it happens on the back porch of Stiles’ house.

Stiles’ daily schedule has become this: wakeup at seven, school till two-fifteen, lacrosse practice till four-thirty, training with the pack till six, dinner and homework till he can’t stay awake any longer—sleep, repeat. He depends on his friends’ generosity to get him from one place to the next and they’ve all been great about it. Mostly it’s been Scott and his bike because Isaac spends a lot of evenings with Allison and the second seat is free, but everybody has given him their fair share of rides.

Everybody but Derek, which is why it comes as a surprise when he sees Lydia zipping off in what he thought was his ride, with Cora in the passenger seat, and Derek’s little black car pulling up in front of him. Stiles just stares at it for a moment—too long for Derek because he reaches across the car and pushes the passenger door open.

“Get in,” he says.

Stiles gets in, tucking his backpack in between his feet.

“So where are we going?”

“Home,” Derek says.

Huh. Stiles doesn’t know why Derek would want to take him to his place—he’s not even sure where Derek and Cora are living now, hopefully somewhere with a roof and working plumbing—but he’s happy to go there. He actually has a shit ton of homework due tomorrow, but doing what Derek wants might mean Derek kissing him again—well, might mean Derek making points—with his mouth—that Stiles, you know, wants to—have made—so—away they go.

Stiles runs his fingers across his throat. His skin is still burned pink and raw from Derek’s stubble rubbing all over him the week before, probably exacerbated by how much Stiles has been touching it—rubbing it, scratching at it. It’s the one thing he gets to keep.

“Stop it,” Derek says sharply.

“That’s not really for you to say,” Stiles says even as he snaps his hand down.

Derek takes a deep breath, growls, and rolls down the windows. “Just—wait. I can’t focus when you smell like that.”

Smell like what? Stiles is pretty turned on already, but he’s turned on around Derek most of the time. Is that smell really so distracting? Apparently. Stiles zips his hoodie up and folds his hands on his lap. They don’t say anything else, and Stiles tries to figure out how much time he’ll really need to get all his homework done tonight, until they pull into Stiles’ driveway.

“Oh!” he says.

“What?”

“I thought—” Stiles shrugs, not sure why he thought what he thought before. “Thanks.”

Derek nods, not smiling. He turns off the ignition and gets out of the car. What—Stiles scrambles out of the car and jogs after him.

“Do you want to talk to my dad?” he says when they’re both standing at the back door.

“No, I—” Derek frowns, and pouts, the air thickening with whatever he can’t figure out how to say.

“Derek—”

Stiles is cut off as Derek steps forward and kisses him.

He clearly means to make it quick and friendly, but as he steps back, Stiles steps forward, threading his hand through Derek’s hair to hold him in place and fitting their bodies together. It’s not even a conscious move—he just really doesn’t want to let Derek go.

But, _ugh_ , that clearly wasn’t Derek’s plan and Stiles really doesn’t want to force anything on him, so he slides his hand down to Derek’s shoulder, way less grabby and possessive a hold, even if he can’t help but give Derek’s warm muscles a squeeze, and pulls out of the kiss—or tries to, but Derek moves with him this time, wrapping his arms around Stiles’ waist.

_Well, in that case—_ Stiles surges forward again.

He loses track of time a little then, only coming back to himself as Derek pulls away from him. Stiles is pressed up against the strip of wall between the back door and kitchen window, legs wrapped so tight around Derek’s hips that it’s painful to extend them and stand up again.

Derek runs a finger across Stiles cheek and kisses him one more time, light and sweet.

“Goodnight,” he says.

Stiles watches him stride back to his car open mouthed. Derek looks back at him right before he ducks into his car and sends him a small, beautiful smile.

What the hell? Was the point of that kiss? Goodnight?

Stiles can’t even, not right now. He has to finish an AP Chem lab and the teacher this year is twice as horrible as Mr. Harris was, which Stiles never thought was possible, but there it is.

_But first I need to jerk off or I won’t be able to focus on anything else_ , he thinks as he jogs up the stairs. No big—he’s not going to last more than fifteen seconds. Stiles closes his bedroom door by pressing his back against it and stuffs his hand down his pants. He squeezes his hand around his cock through his briefs to make it last a _little_ longer, presses his finger over the slit and feels his precome soak through the cotton. He imagines Derek climbing up the drainpipe to his window and catching Stiles doing this, seeing him so needy and desperate and climbing inside . . . and that’s all it takes. He comes with a whimper, covering his mouth with his arm and biting down hard.

“Homework now,” he says, kicking his jeans off shaky legs, and wiping himself clean as he pulls off his briefs and tosses them in the laundry pile.

Stiles manages not to think about the kiss or what it might have meant until training is winding down the next night. Everyone’s heading home so Stiles goes over to Scott to ask for a ride. “Dude, would you—”

Scott claps him on the shoulder and says, “Nope.”

“What?”

“I said no. You’re all set.”

“Uh—”

“Heads up!”

Stiles turns toward Derek just in time to see a tidy ring of keys flying toward his face and lift his hand to catch them. He shakes out his stinging arm and raises an eyebrow at Derek.

“Want to drive?” Derek says.

Stiles would actually _love_ to get behind the wheel again. It’s been over a month since he lost the Jeep and he misses the feeling of control—plus he’s always wanted to rev the engine in that spunky little Camaro. Derek rolls his eyes when Stiles does it in the middle of the empty street, but it feels just as fast and furious as he expected.

Stiles pulls all the way into his driveway like Derek did the night before. Derek gets out of the car with him again, and walks him up to his door. Stiles turns to Derek and opens his mouth to say something, but doesn’t even manage to get a word out this time before Derek’s kissing him.

Good thing because he had no plans for what to say.

Derek is wearing a button-down shirt that has been driving Stiles crazy all night. If he’s sanding straight, arms at his sides, it fits him great. But if he does anything else, it stretches obscenely, threatening the seams over his shoulders and gaping between the buttons and Stiles really, really wants to just take it off, put it out of his misery, say hello to Derek’s bare skin. Tonight Derek’s the one pressed against the wall and Stiles is kissing his way around Derek’s collar and when he hits the first button, he thumbs it open, and licks at the newly revealed dip in between his pecs.

He unbuttons a second and leans forward—to almost hit his head on his house. Derek is on the other side of the porch, rubbing his chest and frowning at Stiles. “That was—” He coughs. “Goodnight.”

Stiles watches him get back in his car and back up down the driveway. _So_ , he thinks, rubbing his cock through his pants a little, _I guess this is a thing._ He’s pretty sure that he gets the reason now.

His dad once told him that their habits were what made him miss his mom the most—she made the first pot of coffee in the morning; she kicked off her socks while she was sleeping every night and he had to fish them out of the sheets before he made the bed; she kissed him at least twice every day, before they left for work and before they went to sleep. He could depend on their habits. They punctuated his life.

If Derek needs something to depend on, Stiles can do that for him.

Even if it means he has to jerk off before he does anything else for the second night in a row.

Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table as Stiles walks in, so he rearranges himself in his pants as subtly as he can. It has to be obvious as hell because, hello, his dad is a detective and a dude himself—he knows the deal. Stiles has seen him limp inside after quite a few dates with Melissa by now. They have an understanding. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Or at least Stiles thinks they do until Dad stops him halfway out the door by asking him, “Was that Derek Hale?”

Stiles trips on the rug.

“Um—sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”

Stiles dutifully turns around and looks at his dad. “It means—yes.”

“Uh-huh. Good.”

“Good?”

Dad holds out a stack of papers. “Go through these and tell me which ones you’ve come across as vampires?”

Stiles takes it and nods. “I’ll pass them around the pack tomorrow.”

“You and Derek can debrief me at dinner.”

“Why would Derek—” His dad gives him a look that brooks no argument. “— _not_ be at dinner, right?” Stiles tries to laugh and swallow at once, chokes. “Yeah. Okay! We’ll debrief you tomorrow.”

From that moment on, he is trying to find a way out of it. Right before lunch the next day, inspiration strikes. He begs Lydia to drive him to Ike’s Place and picks up Melissa’s favorite sandwich, and another for Lydia—and none for himself because those two finished off his allowance for the week—and then she drives him to the hospital so he can give Melissa her bribe.

“What a sweet child!” Melissa says. “Whatever could I possibly do, I wonder, to return the favor?”

“Funny you should ask! Because I know just the thing: come to dinner tonight? We’re ordering Chinese!”

“The return favor is to receive food and spend time with my boyfriend?”

“That’s right! Bring Scott! The more the merrier—I’ve got a hankering for a big ole family dinner.”

“All right,” she says, her eyes softening. “I’ll be there around seven?”

“Perfect!”

Melissa brings Scott and Scott brings Isaac and Isaac brings Allison; Derek brings Cora, who brings Lydia, and then they can’t not invite Danny, Ethan, and Aiden, right? And suddenly all twelve of them are sitting in the Stilinski living with about twenty cartons of Chinese food spread out between them.

It is so generally uncomfortable, if only because of lack of space, that it’s impossible for his dad to make it too uncomfortable for Derek specifically. Stiles’ mission? Complete success. 

Derek also pays for the delivery and collects all of the dishes to bring them into the kitchen, rinse them, and load them into the dishwasher. That definitely wins some points with Dad, no matter how he tries to hide it. Stiles is about to go help Derek at the sink when Cora grabs him by the arm and pulls him outside.

That is exactly the kind of prelude he gets from Derek before he gets kissed, so Stiles backs away from his similarly forceful sister. It’s crazy that less than a month ago he would have made out with Cora anywhere, anytime she wanted. But now . . .

“If you’re going for it with Derek,” Cora says, “I’m going to go for it with Lydia.”

Oh! Well, okay, then. But, still, “I’m not—”

He sighs. Stiles and Cora have had something simmering on the back burner for a while now, but it had never felt like the right time to bring it forward and turn up the heat. She was too far away and then there were too many people trying to kill them. He knew she and Lydia had something simmering, too— _Stiles_  and Lydia did, too, kind of, which had led to a very weird and exciting game of Never Have I Ever a couple months back, while the three of them floated around on pool rafts in Lydia’s backyard.

Anyway, Stiles really doesn’t feel like he’s  _going for it_  with Derek, but he has been making out with him a lot and it’s probably creepy that he’s been keeping his  _sister_  as a prom date possibility in the back of his mind. He needs to put a stop to whatever the hell this is with Derek and grab Cora with both hands, or let her go.

And confusing and sporadic as whatever the hell with Derek is, Stiles doesn’t want to stop it. Not at all.

“Cool,” he tells Cora and holds his fist out for a bump.

She laughs and bypasses his hand to punch his arm, hard enough to leave a bruise, on the tender spot where she usually congenially punches him. The Hales like to hurt him. Stiles has come to accept that.

He goes back inside and leans against the backdoor to watch Derek standing at the sink. It’s cute, him being all domestic and meticulous. He’s got some suds on his forehead. He’s practically clean-shaven tonight and that makes Stiles want to kiss him even more than usual. He wants to rub his cheeks all over Derek’s cheeks.

“He’s a little old,” Dad says, suddenly appearing right next to him. Stiles jumps. Between his low tone and the running water, Derek might not have heard that, but he probably did. Dad probably wanted him to.

“We’re not—he’s just—you’re never too old to have friends!”

“Stiles.”

“Six years is—I mean—he’s really immature for his age. He had some arrested development after the whole mass murder of his family thing.” Dad narrows his eyes at him. “That doesn’t really help, does it?”

“I trust you.”

“You _do_?”

“I don’t trust him,” Dad continues. “I don’t trust him to eat his vegetables or to have comprehensive car insurance or to take care of you any better than he takes care of himself—which is why it’s lucky that you can take care of yourself—and that _he_ has you.”

Stiles shakes his head helplessly. “He doesn’t.” He is going to check in about that car insurance, though.

“Well, if he ever does. He’ll be lucky.”

Why does everyone assume that Stiles is in control of this situation? It’s not like Stiles is sitting around, twiddling his thumbs, deciding if today’s the day he’ll deign for this _whatever_ to turn into a _relationship_. He’s picking up whatever scraps Derek throws at him! If a relationship were on the table, he’d grab it with both hands.

Stiles just sighs. “I’d be lucky, too.”

It’s a school night, so everyone has gone home by the time Derek’s done with the dishes. Stiles approaches him with a dishcloth and reaches up to wipe the suds off his forehead.

“Want to come upstairs?”

Derek opens his mouth and then looks at something over Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles turns and sees his Dad making full-on sheriff face at him, arms crossed over his chest, jaw set. Derek swallows. “Nope.”

Stiles laughs. “Okay. I’ll walk you to your car.”

It just feels polite, the counter of what Derek has been doing when he drops Stiles off. They had four extra cars parked around the house tonight, so Derek’s is across the street and down a couple houses. Derek puts his key in the door and looks at Stiles. Stiles looks back. It’s a warm night for March, almost muggy, with a breeze cutting through it.

The kiss is coming any time now, right?”

“Goodnight,” Stiles says, prompting him.

Derek smiles. “Goodnight.”

Oh _, fine_. Stiles pinches Derek’s chin in his hand and pulls him close enough to kiss. He’s ready to leave him with a quick, smacking kiss on the mouth—two can play hard to get, thank you very much—but Derek sneaks his tongue over Stiles’ lips and he really doesn’t have a defense against that. He throws his arms around Derek’s neck and melts into it.

Things are just getting good when Derek holds Stiles shoulders in both hands and firmly pushes him back. “Okay,” he says, breathing hard. “Okay. Goodnight.”

“What!” Stiles says.

Derek looks back at him. “What?”

“You’re leaving me with blue balls _again_? I can’t keep doing this Victorian bullshit, Derek—you’re going to kill me.”

With a growl, Derek opens the car door, flips the seat forward, and easily throws Stiles into the backseat. The seats are short and skinny and they’re raised in the middle, which makes lying on them pretty uncomfortable, but he’s so fine with it as he watches Derek rip his own shirt off—rips it _in half—_ and jumps on top of him.

Hallelujah!

Derek noses at Stiles’ jaw, and Stiles bares his throat, moaning as Derek runs his teeth over his earlobe and down his throat.

Before he can lose his nerve, Stiles says, “I want to blow you.”

Derek pulls back, laughing, his face deadly serious. “Really?”

Stiles licks his lips, nodding. “I want your cock in my mouth.” Derek stares at him. “I’ve never done it before, but I mean—is that okay?”

“Stiles—” Derek interrupts himself, kissing him. “I’m sorry. _Yes_ , it’s okay. If anyone ever tells you that’s not okay, you kick them in the chest and get the hell out of there because something is _wrong_. I just got kind of stunned hearing those words come out of your—” Derek runs his thumb across Stile’s bottom lip and lets out a shuddery breath. “—your mouth.”

Yeah! Blow jobs are awesome. Confidence firmly in place, Stiles smirks at him, slides out from under Derek and squeezes in between Derek’s legs. Derek sits up, running his hands over Stiles’ shoulders. There’s even less room on the floor of the back of the Camaro, but Stiles is flexible. He’s no match for brute strength against most supernatural foes, and he never will be, so most of his training is about being fast and wiggly.

Derek’s jeans have a button fly which is crazy sexy to unpeel. Derek lifts up to let Stiles pull his jeans down his thighs. His cock is huge! Stiles got that idea from the feel of it running across his ass, but it’s different to see the length of it against his leg, straining against his black boxer briefs, about an inch and a half sticking out the end.

“My cock goes up when I get hard in my shorts,” Stiles muses, barely realizing he’s saying it out loud. He strokes Derek through the cotton, watching a little precome dribble out of his slit.

“Mine’s not that much smaller when it’s soft, so it’s down the leg already.”

“Oh my god.” How is the thought of Derek’s flaccid cock so hot? “I can’t wait to see that.”

“The way I react around you, that might take a while.”

The implication that they _have_ a while is really hot, too. Stiles kisses the mushroom head of Derek’s cock, and licks his lips, hoping the taste of his precome won’t be too weird, determined to act like he loves it even if it is, but it’s actually—fine! Not exactly something he’d want on tap, but salty, and not as bitter as his own spunk, and plenty good enough to moan like a whore while he sucks everything that’s peeking out into his mouth. Derek has his hands flat on the seats on either side of his legs.

Stiles reaches for Derek’s waistband and pulls his briefs down his legs, his cock springing up and whacking him in the mouth. He licks at the smear of precome it leaves and strokes him slowly.

“You have foreskin!” Stiles says, delighted. He’s never seen a real uncut cock—or any cock besides his own, but still.

“You won’t find a born werewolf without it,” Derek says. “It’s barbaric how hospitals insist on cutting up you helpless little human babies.”

“Do you mind that I—”

“No! No, you’re beautiful.”

Stiles smiles, leaning his head against Derek’s knee. “You haven’t even seen it hard, yet.”

“Oh, yeah,” Derek says. “You’ve also got all your clothes on. Lots of things to fix. Get up here.”

“No ripping,” Stiles says as he straddles Derek hips. “I need to walk home in these clothes.”

Derek smoothly pulls Stiles’ shirt over his head and undoes his pants.

“Look at you,” Derek says softly, running his hands down Stiles sides.  

“I’ve gotten bigger since we started training in the werehouse.” He’s gained about ten pounds of muscle, in fact, and some decent definition, too—not exactly Derek’s build, or even Scott’s, but not too bad.

“You’re gorgeous. You’ve always been gorgeous.”

Stiles is blushing, he can feel it. “Nah.”

“I saw you at the sheriff’s station the night of the fire. Do you remember that?”

“Course I do.” Stiles puts his arms around Derek’s neck, thinking of that night. Derek was being held in his dad’s office for questioning and Stiles peeked at him through the door window. “I smiled at you. You gave me the most tragic attempt at a smile back. I asked my dad if I could bring you a snack.”

“That would have been nice.” Derek ran feather light kisses across Stile’s collarbones.  

“Hey, I was ten. Are you saying you thought I was gorgeous then?”

“ _No_ ,” Derek says, pinching him on the hip. “You had the chubbiest cheeks . . . you reminded me of my little nephew, actually. It was horrible. But last year, when I saw you with Scott in the woods after Laura was killed, I recognized you right away and I thought, _boy did he grow up pretty_.”

Stiles laughs. “I thought the same thing about you. _How did he get hotter?_ ”

Derek takes both their cocks into his hand and strokes them together. “You’ve got a nice, big cock.”

Generally, Stiles would have agreed. He’s not huge, but not small, not even average—big. That was appropriate. Decent length, decent girth, but compared to Derek? “ _Are you kidding me_?”

“I’m a freak show, Stiles. I’ve seen myself next to a few dicks by now. That you just look smaller means you’re damn big. Usually my dick looks like a different body part. Honestly, a lot of guys leave at this point.”

“Leave? As in, decide not to have sex with you?”

“Yeah!” Derek says, like that’s not the craziest thing Stiles has ever heard.

Stiles kisses him hard. “That’s bullshit. You’re so incredible, Derek, I’m so—it’s so—” Shit, how does he explain this without making it obvious that he’s head over heels in love with this man who clearly doesn’t feel the same way—of course he doesn’t because they’ve been doing this for what? Two weeks?—doesn’t have any interest in feeling that way, and—  

_Shit_ , he’s in love with Derek.

“More sucking now,” Stiles says,  “I love your cock.”

Close enough.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this in the middle of the street. Your dad is going to come out here with a shotgun pretty soon. I’ll suck you at the same time.”

Stiles has no problem with that. They lie on their sides, heads on opposite sides of the car. This is the most uncomfortable Stiles has ever been by choice, but that will just make it easier not to come right away.

Stiles has practiced giving a blow job with a dildo, but Derek is bigger—and warmer—and leakier—all of which is sexier, but—different, that’s for sure. He takes a deep breath, flattens his tongue, and opens his throat like he’s yawning, just like he practiced, and takes Derek’s cock down his throat.

He gags immediately and just barely manages not to bite Derek’s cock as he pulls away.

“Fuck,” Derek says, looking at him, his cock pulsing in Stiles’ hand. “Oh, you’re so good—”

“You are the only person who could enjoy me being bad at this,” Stiles mutters and sucks one of Derek’s balls into his mouth because they’re almost incongruously small, tidy little mouthfuls and he know he can handle that. 

“You’re really not,” Derek groans. “You’re just ambitious. No one has ever tried to deep throat me before, I promise you.”

That is _crazy_. He and Derek really should go into porn if they’re such an unusual team: big cock and a mouth that actually likes it!

“To boldly go where no one has gone before,” Stiles says in what comes out as, he’s ashamed to say, a completely unsuitable Sean Connery voice, and he dives back into Derek’s cock.

He’s doing better, licking and sucking small, manageable sections for about ten seconds and then Derek puts his mouth on Stiles’ cock, too. “Fuck,” Stiles says, overwhelmed with pleasure. How is he supposed to do this when his whole brain is zeroing in on what Derek’s doing?

Derek swirls his tongue around the head of Stiles’ cock, which feels amazing. _Wish Derek could feel that_ , he thinks, and realizes that task, copying Derek exactly, is something he _can_ focus on, so he sucks Derek’s cock into his mouth and swirls his tongue around.

And that’s how he gets through it, following every move Derek makes as quickly as he possible can, like the mirroring exercises Ms. Rosen had them do in freshman drama. He feels a little bad that he’s putting all the burden of creativity on Derek, but he’d feel worse if Derek wasn’t getting a blow job at all.

At the end, when Derek manages to deep throat him for what feels like five hours, Stiles takes as much as he can into his mouth and does his personal favorite corkscrew stroke on what’s left out.

After they both come, Stiles is liquid in body and mind, but Derek is alert enough to reposition them so he’s sitting properly in one of the seats and Stiles is on his lap. Especially compared with how uncomfortable he was before, this feels like heaven. He falls asleep for a while. Around midnight, Derek kisses him awake and says softly, “Do you have any homework?”

The word “homework” makes panic shoot through him, but he thinks about it and—“No. It’s midterms—just a bunch of tests. I’m ready for them.”

Derek nods. “Good. Time for bed.”

_I love you_ , Stiles thinks. The words feel like they’re going to burst out of his chest. But he manages to keep them contained as he crawls out of the car, kisses Derek one more time, and walks home where his dad has, amazingly, not waited up for him. “I love you,” he says to the empty room, looking back out the window as Derek drives away.

If ending the night like that became a habit Derek depended on, Stiles really wouldn’t mind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“So, you and Derek,” Danny says, dropping down next to Stiles on the bench. It’s Friday night and they’re in between quarters at a home game against Chico, who suck so hard that Stiles is actually going to get to play and Danny’s apparently more interested in talking about Stiles’ sex life. Seriously, first Scott, then his Dad, and now Danny—didn’t anyone’s own sex lives keep them busy enough?

“There is no me and Derek,” Stiles says.

As if to mock him, Stiles phone chimes with a text: _Sorry we’re late._ Stiles turns to the stands and sees Derek and Cora sitting down next to Lydia, Allison, and assorted parents. Derek smiles and waves at him. Every muscle in Stiles’ body is ready to run over to him and kiss him hello.

Danny’s smirking at him now. “Ethan says you smell different.”

“What does that mean?”

“Also, I have eyes.”

“Why are you talking to me about this? You’re not a feelings guy.”

“Excuse me, I do feelings just fine. It’s just—you’ve been acting happy. And I—like that.”

“You sappy little girl,” Stiles said, bumping his shoulder against Danny’s.

_Ethan told Danny about werewolves over winter break and Danny wasn’t quick to forgive him for all of the secrets and killing his first pack and using Danny to get to Scott. When Danny was still ignoring him their first week back at school, Ethan asked Stiles to talk to him. Stiles didn’t get it. He could only guess Scott and Lydia had already said no and Stiles was his last hope: he and Danny weren’t really friends, his experience with werewolves had been totally different, and he wasn’t even that good at advice. He invited Danny out for coffee, anyway, and harangued him until he agreed to go. Ethan had a serious set of puppy dog eyes on him._

_Stiles regretted it the moment they sat down with their six-dollar locally roasted cappuccinos (his treat). Danny glared silently for ten minutes and the first thing that came out Stiles’ mouth was, “You know, Jackson’s a werewolf, too, and he didn’t even tell you about it, and then he_ left _, so—” Stiles meant that to show how much better Ethan was by comparison, but it really just made everything look worse. “—sorry about your life.”_

_Danny drained his coffee and stood up. “Do you want to get drunk now?”_

_“Uh—” Adderall, caffeine and alcohol were not a recipe for success. Also, it was eleven on a Sunday morning. “Yeah, okay.”_

_They went to Danny’s house. They had a bar the size of Stiles’ whole kitchen from which Danny produced two chilled bottles of limoncello. “Tastes like candy, forty percent alcohol,” Danny said. “The perfect drink.”_

_They were each about half a bottle in when they started making out. Stiles isn’t sure which one of them started it, and it doesn’t really matter, anyway. Danny made it as far as taking Stiles shirt off before he ran to the bathroom to throw up. Stiles didn’t take that personally because he passed out before Danny even came back._

_The next day, as Stiles staggered to first period with a killer hangover, Ethan tackle-hugged him and thanked him for his help. From the sound of it, Danny went to Ethan’s to accept his apology right after he puked—and hopefully gargled some mouthwash. Stiles didn’t take that personally either. Kissing Stiles reminded Danny he had options and confirmed that Ethan was who he really wanted, whatever his faults, whatever his history. Stiles confirmed he was at least a little attractive to gay guys. It was a win-win._

_Danny felt really bad about it, though. He played matchmaker with him and just about anyone Stiles passed a smile to. “He’s an idiot,” Stiles said when Danny tried to set him up with Wade Wagner, a baseball player Stiles was just helping to (just barely) pass math.  “And he never gets my jokes.”_

_“So?” Danny said, genuinely baffled. “Let him touch your penis!”_

But he cooled off after that, accepting that he didn’t get Stiles’ “taste in tail,” to use Danny’s words, but Stiles isn’t actually that surprised that Danny’s happy to see him happy with someone. Not that Stiles is _with_ Derek, of course, but—“I guess I am happy. That doesn’t mean Derek and I are, like—”

“If it looks like a duck, and it swims like a duck—hey, do you see that girl?” Danny points near the end of the stands, and Stiles looks, but no girl stands out to him in particularly.

“No?”

“That blonde girl—” Stiles straightens and looks more carefully at the word ‘blonde.’ Danny sighs. “Never mind, she’s gone. Maybe I imagined her.”

“What made you notice her?”

“I met her earlier this week, I think, at the old movie theater downtown. She was acting really weird. I think she was coming on to me, actually, but it freaked me out.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t even remember. Never mind, it’s not a big deal.”

Stiles nods, even though weird usually means a big deal in this town. “Do you—”

“A host! She said something about ‘a host that could bring her back.’”

“Bring who back?”

Finstock blows his whistle, ordering the team to huddle up before they start playing again. “Who knows?” Danny says, standing up. “Come on. You’re playing attack this quarter, right? You’re going to crush Chico!”

“A kitten could crush Chico.”

Danny grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “Yeah, but it’s going to be you!”


	3. Chapter 3

As expected, they win the game easily. Derek buys them some beer and they go to the werehouse to celebrate, wind down, decide what to do with the rest of their night. They’re talking about seeing a late movie or going dancing at Jungle, when they’re ambushed by drones. This has become as predictable as anything else during the week and they pull out weapons and spread out among the vamps swarming into the room without saying a word.

There’s a lot of them tonight, at least two dozen, and their technique is a little different, too. Usually Stiles is bumping into people as they fight because they’re all clustered together so tight; tonight they spread out over the whole werehouse and Stiles can’t imagine the pack’s doing anything differently, so it has to be something the drones are doing.

Of course, Stiles doesn’t think about that until later.

After all the vamps are taken care of, Scott calls out, “Everyone okay?” and they come together in the middle of the room.

One of the vamps scratched Lydia pretty good, four thin red lines down her arm—“Acrylics,” she scoffs—but otherwise everyone confirms they’re unharmed.

“Where’s Danny?” Ethan says.

Stiles looks around at his friends, all of them looking around just the same, for Danny, who’s clearly missing. Stiles widens his search to all around the werehouse. It’s a big space, but there isn’t really anywhere to hide.

“ _Where’s Danny_?”

“There!” Cora shouts, pointing toward the entrance, but Aiden’s already running, the other wolves close behind him.

Human hearing can’t catch any signal, but he and Lydia and Allison follow them outside the werehouse and to the left. Stiles rounds the corner just in time to see Ethan rip a vamp’s head off with his bare hands, managing to slam his face into the wall before it explodes into dust.

“There was a blonde,” Ethan gasps. “She ran off. Scott and Derek went after her, but—”

He drops to his knees beside—oh, god—beside Danny, who is slack and unmoving in Ethan’s arms, eyes already shut, not enough life in him even to say goodbye. He’s paler than Stiles has ever seen him, a sloppy bite wound on his neck and—no, _no—_ blood wet around his mouth. That means he fed off the vampire and that means Danny won’t be dead for long.

“Would it work if we staked him now?” Isaac says.

“Isaac!” says Allison, smacking him.

“No,” Ethan says, running his hands over Danny’s face.

Scott and Derek are back, slowing down to a human pace just beyond where the rest of the pack is circled around Danny. Stiles looks between them, silently asking what happened, and both of them shake their heads—they lost her.

Aiden crouches down beside Ethan, puts his arm on his brother’s shoulder. “Ethan—”

“ _No_. We’re not—we can’t—”

“ _Danny_ is gone. When this body opens its eyes again, it’s going to be something else,” Aiden says. “You know that.”

“No.”

“We’ll take him to the clinic,” Scott says, in alpha voice. “And we’ll decide what to do there. If we—get rid of Danny’s body, we’re not going to do it in some alley.”

They have about seventy-two hours until a demon possesses Danny and he wakes up. Stiles doesn’t know if seeing Danny moving and talking and looking at him again would make this easier or harder to deal with.

 

 

* * *

 

 

One thing’s for sure: seeing Danny all still and pale and dead on the exam table, under the bright surgical lights, does not make it any easier.

Is this what they had wanted all along? Could they tell how grateful Stiles was to not be turning into a vampire when they kidnapped him and they decided this would be the best way to punish the pack for what Derek did to their coven?

Deaton already went home for the night so Scott lets them in and calls him back

“Oh, no,” Deaton says when he sees him.

“I’m sorry,” Scott tells him quietly. “I know there’s nothing you can do, but we just—didn’t know what else to do.”

“No, there’s nothing I can do, but . . . well, there might be something.”

“What,” Derek barks.

Stiles reaches out for his hand without thinking, but catches himself in time. For a moment his hand hovers scant inches from Derek’s—would he mind? Would it help?—and he makes it drop back to his side. Probably not.

“Danny might not be gone,” Deaton says.

“His soul, you mean?” Lydia says. “His human mind?”

“Yes,” says Deaton and something in Stiles snaps.

“Excuse me? Deaton, you told us, and I quote, ‘They’re dead. They’re gone.’ And now you’re saying they _might_ not be gone?”

“It’s unclear!”

Stiles groans loud enough to interrupt him. Deaton is a fount of information, and he’s important to Scott, and he makes good macaroni and cheese—like, crazy good—but Stiles is getting really tired of the man keeping important information from them until shit hits the fan and they need to clean it up.

“Most sources agree that the human soul moves on to whatever plane of existence comes after this one, but some have argued that what _makes_ a vampire a demon, rather than a drone, is the presence of the human soul itself, that the soul is trapped in the body, with the demon in control of all action. I read an essay about how the demon might even feed on it—human blood powers the body, a human soul powers the mind. It’s possible.”

“Is the human aware? Does he know what’s going on?” Cora demands.

“Theoretically . . . perhaps! There’s no way to know. There are records of vampires saying as much, but that could have been nothing more than taunting lies.”

“How does this change anything?” Derek says. “Either he’s gone now or he’s _trapped_ until we kill the vampire and _then_ he’s gone. Or he might just come back a drone!”

“Danny met a blonde earlier this week,” Stile says, remembering.

“He _what_?” Scott says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He told me about it like three hours ago! He said she was acting weird and he said she said something about ‘a host that could bring her back.’ Doc, does that make any sense to you?”

Deaton frowns. “It’s been theorized that killing a vampire only destroys the— _host_ , the corpse the demon has possessed, but the demon survives and might possess another host later on. No one knows why a particular demon enters a body. Our best guess was that it was random, but . . . it’s possible that demons can sense certain indicators, qualifications—”

“ _Bring her back_ ,” Lydia mutters. “Maybe the trio realized Danny’s body could bring back their sister.”

“That sounds like all the more reason to kill him now,” Isaac says.

“You!” Stiles says, pointing at Deaton. “What else do you know? Tell us everything right now or so help me—”

Deaton is quiet for a long moment. “There might be— _might_ be—something we can do to put Danny back in control of his body. If it worked— _if_ , mind you—it’s never been successfully done, not in three thousand years—he would still be a vampire, immortal, killed in sunlight, depending on blood to survive, and the demon would still be inside him, ever struggling to regain control.”

“A monster trying to take over your mind?” Ethan says, looking at Danny and smoothing his hair away from his face. “That’s my best case scenario, too. I think we can handle that.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Thank god it’s Friday. Stiles pulls out his phone to call Danny’s mom and tell her he’s spending the night at Stiles’. He’s done it plenty of times to give Danny an excuse to stay over at Ethan’s. She likes him, likes his dad, trusts her son in their care.

Stiles laughs, covers his mouth with his hand, and after a moment he realizes he’s crying, too. TGIF because his friend is dead and Stiles can lie to his mother about it for a little while longer. How is this his life? It’s _Danny_. Danny didn’t even know about werewolves three months ago. He’d been such a safe, normal teenager. How can Danny be dead?

But maybe he’s not.

Stiles has to cling to that hope a little while longer at least. He thinks about the timeline. His dad needs to find the body tomorrow to give the Māhealanis any chance of getting a funeral before the vampire wakes up. If they wait any longer than that, Dad will have to put on a charade of a missing person investigation. What will they do if the demon wakes up? They’ll have to keep it constrained while they search for a way to put Danny back in control. Then worst case scenario, he’s declared dead in seven years, body never to be found. Best case, Danny will have to explain to his parents that he wasn’t missing, he was just possessed by a demon and being held captive by his friends . . .

Stiles doesn’t realize he’s having a panic attack until he’s getting kissed.

Derek is cupping Stiles’ face in his hands and just holding his mouth to Stiles’, soft and steady and sweet. It’s like the whole world pauses for a moment and then he can breathe again, in and out, calm and steady. Stiles is finally okay enough to kiss him back when Derek pulls away. Not far—just far enough to meet his eyes and say, “Are you back? You with me?”

Stiles nods. Derek quirks a grin, moving even farther away from him to sit back on his haunches.

“Lydia told me that worked.”

Right. Not a kiss. Treatment for a panic attack. Of course.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Deaton has a huge library of druidic texts, a lot of them digitized, but even more in massive leather bound books in the clinic’s—surprise!—vast basement library. Stiles immediately sits down with a text at a huge wooden table in the middle of the long rows of bookshelves, and starts reading.

Ironically, Stiles really wishes Danny were here to help him research how to get himself back. Danny was his research buddy. He didn’t have much patience for the actual reading and slogging through archives, but he _found_ the articles, be they publically accessible or hidden behind government security clearance, in no time flat. Stiles would have thought Lydia would be a big help with research, but—no. Lydia, for all of her encyclopedic knowledge of everything, is really a woman of action. She wants to be _doing_ and _using_ her vast knowledge base dynamically. If she can’t do that, she’d rather be shopping.

She’s sitting next to Stiles now, of course. It’s for Danny. Everyone’s at the table with tablets and books in front of them. Scott tries, but he’s useless, and, more or less, so is the rest of their brawn contingent.

Except, surprisingly, for Derek. Though now that Stiles thinks about it, it’s not that surprising. That afternoon they conned Danny into helping them using Miguel, Derek sat in the corner of his bedroom for hours, flipping through Stiles’ brick of a calculus textbook like it was a comic.

Lydia, Deaton, and Ms. Morell—who arrives within an hour of them bringing Danny in, never mind it’s almost two in the morning, reading glasses on—are the only ones who can read Latin or Greek, which makes Stiles feel pretty useless, too. If the solution was in English he’s sure someone would have found it and used it by now and if _that_ had happened, this wouldn’t be such a black hole of scientific and spiritual theory. Vampire research is all underground, but incredibly widespread. He finds huge PDFs in Cajun French and Haitian Creole, mostly handwritten and with marginalia on top of that. It doesn’t surprise him that those cultures had their own theories and traditions, but he’s impressed that the druids preserved them. It would be a lot more helpful if they were translated, though, or anyone was around who could read them.

Still, if something that can bring Danny back to them is in that library, Stiles is going to find it. He sends his dad a text: _Will be gone all weekend, but will check in. I’m OK_ , and settles in to stay a while.

He falls asleep on the tome he’s combing through sometime after breakfast (Hot Pockets and very sugary coffee) on Saturday morning. When he wakes up, he doesn’t know what time it is, and he doesn’t care. He just pees, splashes some water on his face, grabs a protein bar, and gets back to it. He runs around the clinic a few times and reads, and reads, and falls asleep, and reads, and reads, and eats the Cup Noodles Scott puts in his hand, and reads, and reads, and then it’s nearly midnight on Sunday night.

He only knows that because Derek comes up behind him, covers his eyes with one big, warm hand, and whispers. “It’s almost midnight. You have school tomorrow. Time to go sleep in your own bed.”

“No,” he says, and startles at what a petulant child he sounds like. Maybe it _is_ time to sleep through the night.

“Yes,” Derek says. “I’m giving you a ride.”

He lifts Stiles standing by the elbows and directs him toward the stairs. Stiles stumbles on the second step. Derek catches him around the waist and then lifts him up into a bridal carry.

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, clutching at Derek’s shoulders because now he’s moving _fast_. “I am not an invalid.”

“No, but you are an idiot child. I don’t know why I like you so much.”

“You _like_ me?”

“Yeah,” Derek huffs. “I’m a good friend, remember?”

Dad’s waiting on the back porch as the Camaro pulls into the driveway tonight, so it seems that there will be no kissing or coming happening—not that Stiles really feels up for it. Derek still walks him to the door and passes him off to his dad like a baton in a relay race. Dad puts his arm around Stiles shoulder and he cuddles against his dad’s chest because he’s really tired and he can get away with it right now. He can have this.

“How’s he doing?” Dad says, like Stiles not even there. “How’re _you_ doing?” he continues, but that’s directed at Derek, too.

“It’s—weird. It’s like we put grieving on pause because _maybe_ —but maybe not. Maybe this is just a long stretch in the denial stage, you know?”

After a moment Stiles realizes Derek assumes his dad knows what’s going on, but Stiles never told him, so—

“Yeah, I know,” his dad says. Someone else must have told him what was going on. That’s nice. It’s nice having everybody in the pack. “No luck yet?”

“No.”

“You’re not going back there tonight, are you?”

“ _I_ don’t have school tomorrow.”

“You have a bed? You’re staying somewhere with a real bed and clean sheets?”

“Yes, sir,” Derek says and Stiles can hear the smile in his voice.

“Go use it, then. That’s a strong suggestion from your sheriff.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Some seventy-one hours after Danny was bitten they have to accept they’re not going to fix this before the demon possess him. It’s Monday night and they all went to school except for Ethan, who refuses to stop looking for a way to fix this or even go any farther from Danny than the bathroom. It’s been hard to convince him to eat and drink water.

Stiles itches with how similar it is to what the trio did to him when he was kidnapped, but they position Danny’s lax body on a chair in the corner of the library and chain him to it. When the vampire awakes, it’s instant, no confusion or fuzziness. He realizes he’s restrained and hisses at them, straining against the chains and dragging his gaze around the group. He settles on Ethan and sends him a mean, ugly smirk.

“Ethan,” he purrs. Obviously he’s not a drone. Stiles isn’t sure if that should be a relief. “Ooh, the things Danny thought about you—things he never told you—things he was afraid—”

Derek comes forward, grabs the vampire roughly by the back of the head, and stuffs something in his mouth, gagging him. After a moment Stiles notices his bare feet and realizes the something is his socks. Gross!

Good.

“We’ll give you blood once in the next forty-eight hours,” Scott tells the vampire. “I know you can’t go much longer than twenty-four hours without feeding, so make it count. You figure out how to tell us when you need it.”

And then they get back to researching.

They don’t find anything that night. Nothing on Tuesday. The trio doesn’t send any new drones after them and Stiles wonders if they’re going to come after them themselves now. The clinic is well-warded against them, but if Danny is their sister now, they have good reason to find a way in. He thinks about ungagging him and asking, but decides that’s a bad idea. He can feel the demon glaring at them, like an itch on the back of his neck, and Stiles really doesn’t want to know anything he has to say. Stiles is exhausted. They’re all exhausted. And they can’t keep going at this pace or everyone is going to fail their classes.

Then, on Wednesday, as Stiles is trying to translate a manuscript from what he remembers of two semesters of Spanish, Lydia whispers, “I found it.”

Ethan flies to her side to look at the book in her lap. “What?”

“It’s a in Irish Gaelic—”

“You speak Gaelic?” Cora says, looking at Lydia like her brilliance fits her like lingerie. 

Lydia wraps her hand around the back of Cora’s neck and smiles down at her. “Doesn’t everybody?”

Scott coughs. “What _is it?_ ”

“It’s a ritual that’s supposed to—it says, ‘ _daonnachta ar ais go dtí dearg-due_ ’—restore humanity to a vampire. Humanity . . . I mean, that could mean a conscience or something, but I think this is it.”

Ethan looks like he might cry while smiling so wide it could split his face. “What do we need to do?”

First they need to collect a lot of stuff. They need a Brigid’s cross, blessed in holy water and dry enough to burn well. They need white sage. They need tallow candles, which, shockingly, no one in Beacon Hills sells, so they have to make their own with suet from a cattle ranch outside of town. They need mountain ash (of course) and a white marble bowl to burn it in. They’re burning all the required materials at some point in the ritual, actually, except for the mirror, which goes in the center of a circle of everything else. They just pick up a plain silver glass mirror at Good Will, no frame, no beveled edges, and hope that it will do.

They move the library table to clear a big space, and arrange the circle. They move the vampire’s chair so he’s right outside the circle, facing south, and Lydia sits down on the floor directly across from him, facing north. She starts everything burning, north, south, west, and east. And then she says the incantation.

Stiles doesn’t know anything about Irish Gaelic, but whatever she’s saying sounds legit. She memorized the words, saying the verses backwards—so she didn’t set off any magic accidentally—so many times that Stiles has them down now, too. Halfway through it’s pretty obvious nothing’s happening. Magic objects, magic words, but no magic. Still, Stiles doesn’t say anything in case he just doesn’t have a sense for this.

Lydia finishes the incantation and, after a moment he vampire starts to laugh around his gag. Ethan throws a glass beaker on the ground and stalks out of the room. Aiden goes after him. Scott pulls out a broom to sweep up the broken glass. Everybody else just droops.

Stiles goes outside. They probably got their hopes too high. They’re not used to Lydia being wrong, even through Irish translation and magical interpretation. He hears someone follow him out and looks up expecting to see Derek, but it’s Deaton.

That’s weird. Deaton usually only gives his emissary pep talks to Scott. Nevertheless, Stiles throws him a smile and waves him over.

“Do you think it was the mirror?” Stiles says. “Did they even have silver glass mirrors when that spell was written, do you think?”

“The mirror is fine. In the past they might have used a bowl of water, a polished metal plate—the point is reflection. I’ve seen the same instructions in many exorcism rituals.”

“Ever used successfully?”

“Sometimes.” 

“Then do you know what’s making this unsuccessful?”

“Stiles, for the magic to work . . . for it to have any chance of working . . . you should attempt it.”

Deaton looks very sure and very tired. Stiles rubs his eyes.

“You didn’t tell us everything like I told you to, huh?”

“You’re not magical in and of yourself, but you have an intense connection with things that _are_ magical. You’re a powerful conduit, as powerful as anyone I’ve ever met.”

Stiles stares at him. “Are you sure?”

“Very. If anyone is likely to cast this spell successfully, it’s you.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“Magic isn’t easily done. It demands a price. You’d be calling upon forces that would rather be left alone. Doing this, if you succeed—even if you don’t—it’s going to take a lot out of you.”

“Define _a lot_.”

“Performing magic this powerful has broken bones, brought on heart attacks, put people into comas—”

Shit. That really is a lot.

“And you didn’t warn Lydia about this because . . ?”

“Because the lamp had a better chance of performing any magic tonight. That’s not her gift.”

“Seems like a pretty crappy gift to get.”

“You don’t get this gift, Stiles. You give it. Or—you can try, if you want to. I’m not going to tell anyone else what I just told you and _I_ certainly won’t think any less of you if you decide not to do anything with the information.” Deaton puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “A failure could kill you and then you and Danny would both be gone.”

Stiles nods. “Thanks, Doc.”

The question is: how much less would Stiles think of himself? Can he _not_ save Danny if it’s within his power to do it?

Stiles goes back into the basement because research was his comfort place. Deaton has to be exaggerating about what happens to people who performed magic. How did it get so romanticized by the media if everyone who did it died?

At first Stiles discovers he’s right. Mostly he reads stories about bloody noses and mysterious bruises—but that’s all the result of little magic: moving objects, lighting candles, that kind of thing.

Then Stiles finds some old, dusty film reels and a projector in a box. He sets it up against a blank wall. They play scratchy black and white home movies, all of young men in priests’ robes performing more complicated magic. One ends with a priest falling on the floor, clutching his chest. In another, a priest’s arm shoots out in front of him and he stops chanting mid-sentence, staring at it like he has no control over what his body is doing; after a few moments, his forearm cracks in half by itself and the priest starts screaming. In the last one Stiles watches, a priest’s head explodes.

_Jesus Christ!_

Something slimy lands on the camera lens. Stiles smacks the reel out of the sprocket to stop the show, not even caring as the tape stretches and rolls over the floor. He covers his face with his hands. He really doesn’t want his head to explode. He likes his head. He likes his life, despite all this vampire crap. There were more kisses from Derek in his future, he’s almost positive.

There _were_ —god, he’s already thinking about his future in the past tense.

“Lydia didn’t even get close, did she?” Derek says from far away. Stiles turns and sees him standing at the front of the room.

“Nope.”

Derek walks toward him, picks up the reel off the ground and starts winding the tape back in place. “Looks like getting close gets people dead.”

“Yeah. I wonder what actually succeeding looks like.”

“Whole body explosion, I’m guessing. Blood everywhere. Deaton could never perform a sterile surgery in that room again.”

Stiles laughs, but it clearly doesn’t come off as very amused because Derek cups his hand around Stiles’ jaw and turns his face toward him. “Hey,” he says, like he’s talking to a wounded animal. “Don’t start missing Danny yet. We’ll find another way.”

Stiles turns into Derek’s hand and kisses his palm.

“What if this is the only way?”

“It’s not. Because it’s not going to work. Lydia can’t do it.”

“Deaton says— _I_ can.”

“What?”

Derek’s fingers slip off his cheek and he steps back.

“You can—like _that_?”

“Maybe I’m better than they were.”

“Didn’t we just cover how being good at this would end up? I won’t let you do it!”

“You don’t have a choice—”

“I _can’t_ let you do this.”

“Oh, I think you _can_. I mean, I think you must be capable of letting me make my own decisions, believing in my ability to actually _do_ something—”

“I believe in your ability to get yourself killed, Stiles! Your body is so fragile! It’s not worth it.”

“It’s Danny’s life!”

“It’s _your_ life! You’re essential—don’t you see that?”

“Are you crazy? Of everyone in the pack, I’m the most useless—”

“No!”

“This is the one thing I can do!”

“You can—” Derek roared. That wasn’t actually something wolves could do, but there was no other word for the sound that broke out of his mouth. “You can love me! Stiles—you can _be with me_. You just _existing_ is the most amazing gift. How do you not see that? You can give me what I keep trying to give you. It would be the greatest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

Oh . . . oh.

Stiles’ brain is broken. It’s hard even to remember how to breathe. He has no idea what to say to that or even how to process it.

“But you’ve made it very clear that you’re not interested in all of that,” Derek continues. “I should stop trying to force it. But you’re going to love somebody that much, Stiles, and until then, think of your dad. Think of Scott.”

Derek loves him?

Is that what he just said?

“What?” is all he can manage to say in reply.

“Don’t do this.”

This? Danny. Saving Danny. He can focus on that.

“I have to try.”

Derek looks away from him and in the dim overhead light Stiles sees that his eyes are wet. Oh my _god_ —is Derek crying?—for _Stiles_? They’ve been through so many tragedies together and Stiles has never seen him break down like that.

“I can’t be here. I can’t watch you sacrifice yourself..”

“Please—”

“No! You selfish boy. If I stay I’ll end up stealing you away, locking you in a warm, safe room with me where no one can find us and I never have to stop touching you. And you—you don’t even want that.”

Not _right_ now, no, because Stiles is pretty freaked out and amped up, but when this is all over? If he survives it?

Stiles reaches for Derek.

“I have to go,” Derek says, and faster than Stiles’ eyes could follow, Derek is gone.

Fuck. _Fuck_.

“I love you,” Stiles tells the empty room.

He wants to go after him, but he has no idea where he’s going and, frankly, if Derek managed to get him in a warm, safe room, Stiles doubts he’d be able to leave. He wouldn’t find the courage to give that up, even to bring Danny back to them.

It’s better not to know what he’s missing until he knows he can keep it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 “I want to try it again,” he tells the pack.

They all stare at him, incredulous. They’re all upstairs, sulking in Deaton’s waiting room, and eating his entire stock of jelly beans. Bright light from the setting sun is streaming into the room, absurd against the despondent mood.

“Dude, I know power,” Scott tells him. “And what that ritual inspired before wasn’t just weak, it was—nothing.”

“ _I’m_ going to do it this time.”

If anything, the looks get more dubious.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Whatever, I don’t need your confidence. I’m trying it again! You can stay or not.”

“They’ll stay,” Deaton says firmly.

“Tonight,” he says. “I’m going to go eat some dinner with my dad. Make sure you’re all here at eight o’clock.”

Dad is working late at the station tonight. Stiles should make it over there just in time for his dinner break. He picks up some prepackaged salads from Trader Joe’s and hands his dad a stack. “Just keep a few in the fridge. That way you’ll have them. And you don’t want them to go bad, so—eat them soon.”

Dad sighs into a forkful of lettuce and nods, resigned.

At seven thirty, Stiles gets ready to go and gives his dad a hug.

“What’s going on?” Dad says, patting his back.

“It’s just—Danny and all. I’m feeling kind of . . .” He shrugs. 

“Of course you are. Lana dropped by today.” That’s Danny’s mom. “She said she didn’t want to jump the gun, but she hadn’t heard from him since Friday and she was getting worried. I lied to her face. I told her I was sure everything was fine.”

“You didn’t lie,” Stiles says. “I’m going to make sure of it.”

“The pack figured something out?”

Stiles nods. “I think so. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“You’ll tell me about it tonight.”

Stiles swallows, hugs him again. It’s going to sound weird, because they never say it out loud, but Stiles has to tell him: “I love you.”

“Oh, hey!” Dad says. Stiles turns and sees Melissa in the doorway to his office, holding her own stack of premade salads. Still in scrubs and hair falling out of her ponytail, she looks beautiful.

Stiles laughs. He’s so happy his dad has someone else in his life who cares about him the way he deserves. It makes this a little easier. Stiles crosses the room and hugs her, too.

“Hi, honey,” Melissa says into his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yep,” he says, but his eyes are starting to sting so he quickly lets her go, grabs his backpack, and heads out of the office. “Bye!” he calls, not looking back.

At the clinic, everyone is sitting around eating pizza, what their favorite place calls a garbage pie: pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, olives, spinach, artichoke hearts, and fresh tomato. Stiles gratefully takes a slice. Salads are good for you, but they’re no last meal.

“Is Derek around?” he says, hoping it sounds casual.

“No,” Scott and Cora say on top of each other, looking at him suspiciously.

He shrugs. “Okay.”

_That’s good_ , he tells himself. That’s easier. That’s for the best. A part of him really believes that. The other part knows that Derek being somewhere else is never best.

Stiles eats one more slice of pizza and then it’s five minutes to eight. He needs to do this on a schedule or he’s not going to do it. He pulls Scott into the cat clinic room and quickly pulls him into a hug.

“What’s going on?” Scott says.

No tears this time, thank god. Stiles grins. “Nothing. I just needed to pump myself up. Breathe in your musk.”

Scott laughs. “Okay. You ready to do this?”

“Ready.”

The magical objects are still in a circle on the floor. As Stiles sits down facing north, he looks at the vampire across from him and realizes—he looks worried. Shit—this is really going to work. Stiles had believed it before, but for the first time he _feels_ it. He feels powerful. He feels like a badass. If this is how he’s going to go, he’s glad he feels like this, and not scared.

Lydia crouches next to him and hands him a piece of paper with the incantation on it—spelled out phonetically. That was so sweet of her! Stiles puts his arm around her shoulder and kisses her cheek. “I got it,” he says.

“Are you sure?” She looks scared enough for the both of them.

He squeezes her, nods. “Here we go.”

Stiles strikes a match and lights everything on fire—candle, sage, mountain ash, and cross. He says the first line of the incantation. The vampire starts to struggle.

Stiles doesn’t remember much after that and what he does is like a hazy out-of-body experience. He can see himself raddling off Irish like it’s his native language, lifting smoldering mountain ash out of the bowl and throwing it in the air even though the ritual doesn’t call for that. And he can feel pain, so intense and all encompassing, like he’s being burned alive. It gets hotter and hotter and then a bright white light fills the mirror in front of the vampire, and the mirror starts to tremble violently before it shatters.

And then it all goes black. 


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles wakes up on the floor of the clinic with a pillow under his head and Derek’s leather jacket draped over him like a blanket. He sits up a little, every muscle protesting, and looks around the room. The wolves are all lying on the floor with their own pillows and jackets and the humans are there, too—Allison curled up between Isaac and Scott, Lydia with her arms tight around Cora and—Danny! Danny is right next to Stiles, his arms just as tight around Ethan.

Stiles lies down again, very sore and satisfied. Somehow, he did it. And he’s not dead! It’s so awesome!

Danny’s eyes open, instantly clear and alert, and Stiles jumps. “Hey,” Danny says softly.

“Danny!” Stiles says. His voice is shredded, like he’s been screaming and puking all night. “We got you back!”

“Yeah. Sounds like you almost killed yourself doing it.”

“Hey, no pain, no gain, right?”

Danny doesn’t smile, just looks at Stiles with a steady gaze and reaches out his hand. Stiles reaches out his own in kind and Danny grabs and squeezes it.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You’re welcome.” Stiles takes a deep breath, which hurts every part of his body, but deep inside, he feels good. He feels satisfied. “Do you know why everyone’s sleeping on the floor?”

“Because they were too heavy to move after they all collapsed.”

“What!”

“I don’t remember all of this, but Lydia and Allison told me about it. You were performing the ritual, and it was crazy, I guess—you were making wind with your hands and your eyes went black and you were chanting the incantation without hesitation—but you were sweating, veins bulging, going really pale—you’re _dying_ and everyone’s freaking out, and then Derek comes out of the shadows and lays his hand on you and does that werewolf pain-taking trick, you know? But it was just killing him, too, and he wasn’t even taking enough to save you. So Cora started taking pain from Derek. And Ethan took pain from Cora and Aiden from Ethan and Isaac from Aiden and then finally Scott ended this crazy werewolf pain train, each of them taking enough that everyone could live through the ritual. And it worked.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I know. I wish I had been around for that. But it took a lot out of them—and you. I guess my soul was restored and everybody just dropped to the floor unconscious. You’re the first one to wake up. We could get you to open your eyes and mutter at us earlier, but the wolves are all out cold. Deaton says it’s a healing coma thing.”

“But they’re all okay?”

“Yeah!” Danny laughs, which is a beautiful sight. “Sorry, I should have led with that. They’re all going to wake up. They’re going to be fine.”

Stiles takes a deep breath. He forced himself to pass over Derek before, so he wouldn’t get stuck there and forget to check on everyone else, but now that he’s done due diligence, he turns to Derek’s sleeping form beside him and looks his fill. He looks pretty bad—in a really hot way—dark bruises under his eyes, skin chalky white. He has Stiles’ red sweatshirt stretched over him like a baby blanket.

He looks over his shoulder at Danny. “Do you know how we ended up switching jackets?”

Danny smiles. “He was squirming and whimpering until Allison got the idea to give him something that smelled like you. He settled down after that.”

Stiles wiggled across the inches between them, lifted Derek’s arm, and settled himself against his side. Seemingly by instinct, Derek’s face turned to press against Stiles’ head and inhale deeply. Stiles has no idea what he smells like, except Old Spice deodorant, but—Stiles presses is nose under Derek’s arm and, yeah, even now, unwashed and a little gamey, he smells really, really good. If Stiles smells anything like this to Derek, then he totally gets it.

“He really likes me.”

“Why do you sound so amazed by that?” Danny says. “You’ve been making out with him for weeks.”

“I’m an idiot.” Stiles thinks back a few nights. “I’m an idiot child and he doesn’t know why he likes me so much.”

Stiles traces his fingers over Derek’s collarbones. All this time he’d been waiting for Derek to make the first move—and the second, and the third, and the fourth, _ad infinatum_ —waiting to react, never being the first to _act_ , even when he ached with the desire to be close to him. Touching him casually, without any intention of getting off, just because he wants to, just because Derek is so incredibly beautiful and warm and close—it’s a revelation. 

But he’s still exhausted, so he closes his eyes and falls asleep listening to Derek’s slow, steady heartbeat.

When he wakes up again the room smells like coffee and bacon. He opens his eyes and sits up a little to see most everyone is awake, sitting around, eating and talking quietly.

Lydia notices him first and comes over to him with a cup of coffee, the perfect caramel color of just enough milk. She kneels down in front of him and sets the cup on the ground.

“Hey there, hero,” she says.

“Hey,” he croaks. “Is everyone okay?”

“No thanks to you! You could have warned us about what was going to happen.”

Well, yeah, he could have.

“Pack means no sacrificing yourself without giving us a chance to fix your stupid plan. Right?”

“Right.”

“Come get some food.”

Stiles nods. He’s ravenous, like he always is after sleeping through the night. He looks down at Derek, who hasn’t so much as twitched. Stiles wonders if he wakes up hungry, too, and it’s unbearably exciting that he’s going to find out, that he’s going to be able to respond to that, take care of him.  

“Hey,” Stiles says, shaking him a little. “Derek?”

Nothing.

“Has he woken up?” he asks Lydia, not looking away from Derek.

“Not yet.”

“Is he the only one who hasn’t woken up? Why hasn’t he woken up? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, Stiles,” Dr. Deaton says, coming up behind Lydia. “He took a lot of pain from you, a lot more than any one else got. He just needs time.”

“Does he need to eat? Should we hook him up to an IV or something?”

“No,” Deaton laughs. “He’s in torpor. All of his metabolic processes have slowed down. Werewolves can safely be in this state for months.”

“Is he going to be asleep for _months_?”

“That’s very unlikely. I’d guess he’ll wake up this week.”

“ _You_ need to eat, though,” Lydia says.

Stiles lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Okay. Food sounds good.”

He gets up, every muscle in his body protesting the movement. Eating a tall stack of pancakes and a lot of crispy bacon, he lets everyone tell him how annoyed they are that he went into the ritual without warning them what would happen. He deserves it. He hopes his dad and Melissa never find out the whole story because that will provoke a talking to like he’s never heard.

It’s Thursday afternoon and they all missed school and lacrosse practice and decide they’re due a break from taking care of the pack, too. They start leaving for the night and by five Stiles, Derek, and Dr. Deaton are the only ones left at the clinic. Stiles is sitting with an AP Bio practice test on one knee and Derek’s head on the other. Running his hand through Derek’s hair is a surprisingly effective way to stay focused.

Deaton jangles his keys and clears his throat and Stiles looks up at him. “Do you mind if I stay?”

“Stiles, Derek is going to be fine. This is natural. He’s just healing.”

“Yeah!” Stiles smoothes some hair over Derek’s forehead. “Yeah, I know.”

“You watching him won’t make him heal any faster.”

“No, right.” Here’s Stiles, useless once again. Derek doesn’t need him, doesn’t need anything except to sleep for no one knows how much longer. Because he saved Stiles’ life.

“You can go home,” Deaton presses.

“Yeah, I will.”

Except if what he said earlier is true, Derek does need him. Staying close is exactly what Derek would want (no matter how impossible that still feels). So he will.

He calls his dad. “Hey,” he says, “so, I need your help getting an unconscious werewolf onto our couch.”

That was easier said than done and, no matter how cool his dad has been about Derek so far, it was pretty difficult to say. Derek is two hundred pounds of dead weight who very awkwardly fits into the backseat of the cruiser. He also doesn’t fit on the couch very well, too long, of course, but also far too wide to lie on his back without one arm hanging off the edge. They muscle him upstairs and onto the guest room bed. The bedclothes haven’t been changed in there for at least four months, since his grandparents came for Christmas, but that’s okay. Derek won’t mind some dusty sheets.

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles says.

Dad nods. “Take off his shoes and his jeans. Those are damn tight. There’s no reason for him to wake up uncomfortable.”

“Good idea!”

He moves his hands to Derek’s belt buckle and his dad makes a weird squeaking noise. “I’ll leave you to it!” he says, and disappears.

Stiles laughs as he pulls off Derek’s shoes, socks, and jeans, but that leaves him in tight black briefs and a tight black tee, looking like an Calvin Klein ad and then Stiles is pretty glad Dad left them alone. Derek is brutally hot and Stiles wants nothing— _nothing—_ more than to rub himself all over him.

That is weird, though, so he covers Derek with the quilt folded on the foot of the bed and lies down next to him, putting one appropriate hand on Derek’s chest.

“You should wake up,” he whispers.

Stiles presses a kiss to Derek’s mouth. “Wake up.” He kisses his cheek, stubble rough against his lips, his forehead, one eyelid, and then the other, his nose, his other cheek, the soft sideburns at his temple, his jaw, his chin, and then, again, his mouth.

And, as if awakened like Sleeping Beauty, Derek’s eyes flutter open and he glares up at Stiles. “Leave me alone, boy,” he groans. “Let me sleep.” Derek smacks his lips, which might be the cutest thing Stiles has ever seen. “More kissing tomorrow.”

Relief floods Stiles body and he collapses on top of Derek. He really hadn’t _believed_ he’d wake up again until that moment. 

Stiles kisses him one more time. “Okay. I love you.”

Derek moans pitifully. “Temptress. I caaan’t—“

“Tomorrow. I’ll be here tomorrow.”

Derek tightens his arms around Stiles. “Right here.”

After a moment his hold loosens again as his eyes close and he goes back into torpor.

Stiles has school the next day, so he doesn’t actually stay right there, but Derek doesn’t wake up again until Monday, either, so they both lied. Stiles is a little miffed that he finds out Derek woke up by running home in between last period and lacrosse practice to check on him and finding the bed empty. He’s nervous and fidgety that Derek and Cora have taken off for parts unknown again, all through practice and as he rides across town to the werehouse on Scott’s bike, until he sees the two of them sparring inside. Derek’s gaze snaps to Stiles as he walks through the door and Cora takes advantage of his distraction to kick him off his feet and lay her foot on his neck.

“Ha-ha,” Cora says, smirking down at him. “You suck.”

Stiles goes over to them and offers Derek a hand up. Derek stands and ends up barely an inch from Stiles, radiating heat. Stiles is about to ask him if he wants to go somewhere when he hears Scott shout, “Deaton! What are you doing here?”

Stiles turns and sees Dr. Deaton coming out of the little werehouse kitchen with a steaming mug of something—tea, coffee, hot chocolate mix, and an electric kettle are about all they keep in there.

“I have something to tell you all.”

“Is someone dying?” Stiles says immediately. He hasn’t been obsessing about it, but this has all seemed too good to be true. Things never work out this well. One of them has a secret tumor or something—that’s got to be it.

“No!” says Deaton. “No, it’s good news.” Sure it is. He’ll sure to believe that when he hears it. “What you did on Wednesday night was not give Danny back his humanity.”

Stiles looks at Danny, who has no interest in the fried chicken Ethan is scarfing down beside him, but is otherwise very clearly the kid Stiles has known since they were five, and frowns back at Deaton.

“Um, I really think—”

“I don’t know if the spell was more powerful than you understood, Lydia, or if there was something in Stiles that made it more powerful, and the wolves sharing his pain allowed it to succeed, but—you restored the humanity to Danny . . . and to every vampire within a hundred miles of Beacon Hills.”

After a long moment of silence, Danny says, “Bullshit.”

“No,” Deaton laughs. “I’ve confirmed it as far as the Oregon border.”

“So the trio—”

“They’ve been thoroughly punished. One of them left a note underneath the windshield wiper of your Jeep, Stiles. It’s parked around the back.”

He hands Stiles a white envelope sealed in red wax, one corner weighed down with something heavy. A big part of him wants to put this conversation on hold so he can check on his baby, but that smaller part of him is _very_ considerate, so instead he cracks the seal and upends the envelope, a ring spilling out onto his palm. He slides that onto his pinky, pulls out a piece of velvety cardstock, and reads aloud:

 

_Your pack has effectively killed two more of my sisters. They couldn’t live with what we’ve done over the past two centuries. I go forward alone to seek redemption. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you and to your town. Someday I’ll find a way make it up to you, and to thank you for my liberty._

 

After a moment, Isaac says, “Is it weird that I feel bad for her now?”

“Definitely,” says Allison. She brings one of her hands to her mouth and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I still want to hunt her down and shoot her full of wood.”

“There’s more,” Stiles says, holding up the ring.

 

_The enclosed ring is a gift and an apology. With it worn on his index finger your friend may walk in daylight. Beware: should others know he has this ring, they will stop at nothing to take it from him._

 

Stiles finds Danny’s gaze and tosses him the ring.

“Sweet,” he says, putting it on. “Oh, shit—that could have been a trap.” Ethan grabs his arm. “Nah, I feel fine. Oh my god—can I go back to school?”

“If it works,” Scott says, “I think you can live a normal life, at least for a while. Stay on the team. Graduate with us.”

Danny grins, bright and happy as a summer’s day.

Derek puts his arm around Stiles shoulders and says, “You did that.”

Stiles turns his head and kisses him, easy as anything. “I had the power, but you had the Hail Mary idea to make it work.” Stiles laughs. “Can you believe that?”

“First time for everything,” Derek says.

Banishing a bunch of demons without killing the undead bodies they were possessing is great and all, but Stiles still really wants to check on his car so he heads outside as soon as possible. Sure enough, the Jeep is sitting calmly in the back alley. She doesn’t have a mark on her, might even be cleaner than she was before, but that’s about the extent of Stiles’ ability to actually _check_ on her. He opens the hood and looks at the inexplicable jumble of parts inside.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Derek says, coming up beside him.

“I couldn’t tell you if the engine was missing.”

Derek laughs. “It’s not. It’s right there.” He points and Stiles nods like something in that area stands out. “Do you want me to take a look around? Make sure she didn’t rig it to blow when you turn it on?”

Stiles agrees and out of the Camaro’s trunk Derek produces a headlamp and a rag. He gets right to poking around at things and explaining that his mom showed him his way around a car before she let him take the permit test. After he and Laura left Beacon Hills, if they stopped for a while somewhere, he would get a job at a garage. Most places didn’t need references, he said, once he offered to fix a car for free and successfully did it.

“We didn’t really need the money, but it was a good way to keep busy. I like working with my hands. When did you last change your oil?”

“Uh . . .”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about it for another year. Looks like the vamp took care of it.”

That’s pretty weird, but an appropriate way to apologize for keeping his car captive, he supposes. Stiles stands up and walks over to Derek.

“You should probably show me what you’re doing, huh? Or who’s going to do it when you’re not here?”

Derek doesn’t play along. “If you need a mechanic, Johnny’s over on Glen is a good bet. If you want me . . . I’m not going anywhere, Stiles.”

Stiles forces himself to hold his gaze. “You promise?”

“Not until you go to college.”

“What then?”

“Hopefully wherever you go doesn’t require freshman to live on campus because I’m really looking forward to waking up next to you every morning.” Derek busies himself with folding down the prop rod and closing the hood and then he says, blasé as can be, “Isaac tells me you think I hate you.”

“No!” Derek squints at him and Stiles feels himself blush. “Not anymore.”

“But before?” Stiles nods. “Before I declared my love for you in the library?” Stiles nods. “But after I kissed you over and over again?”

“Well . . . yeah. I mean, I thought you’d take a bullet for me, but when it wasn’t life or death, you know—when  _life_  is a given and you could do what you wanted with it—you’d rather do anything but spend time with me. You’d rather leave Beacon Hills without a word to me and stay away for six months without a postcard. That’s what I thought.”

“Hn,” Derek said. “Is that how you feel about me?”

“Of course I’d take a bullet for you.”

“No, I meant—wait, no! No, you would not.”

“I would, too! I—”

“You  _will_  not. Even a shot to the heart with a wolfsbane bullet has less chance of killing me than a damn slingshot has of killing you. You will let me take the bullet, Stiles. Do you understand?”

“—Yes.”

“Good. But I meant—would you rather do anything but spend time with me?”

“No, not  _any_ thing.” Derek stares at him. “There’s nothing, Derek. There is nothing I would rather do than spend time with you. There it is.”

Derek turns to him and nods, not touching him, not saying anything, not moving. Should he say something else? He has to—he can’t handle the silence. He swallows, ready to backtrack, apologize, _anything_ until Derek kisses him, hitting Stiles in the chest like the first firework exploding in the air on the Fourth of July after a long wait for sunset.

Derek pulls back enough to whisper against his mouth—“Want to have sex in a bed?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Clear it with your dad. I’ll make sure Cora’s out of the house.” 

* * *

Stiles is happy to find that Derek and Cora are living in a nice, normal two-story house in a new development on the west side of town. It’s empty, and very beige, but it’s livable. It’s not a burnt down mansion or a gothic penthouse fit only for a dark Byronic hero. Derek could spend all day in his sweats in this house. They could paint the kitchen yellow. Girl Scouts would come to the door to sell cookies.

Then it occurs to him—“We’re allowed to be here, right? You’re not squatting?”

“Your faith in me is what I love most. Yes, we’re allowed to be here. I bought this place. I just haven’t bought very much furniture.”

“You’ve been back in town for two months! You decked out the loft fast enough.”

“That was all Isaac. And it didn’t work out very well, did it?”

It takes Stiles a moment to realize Derek is legitimately resentful of his old furniture.

“The bad things that happened there weren’t the furniture’s fault.” Derek shrugs. Stiles puts his arms around Derek’s waist. “Or _your_ fault, by and large, terrible alpha though you were.” He gets a little smile for that, and Derek runs his hands up Stiles’ arms slowly, delicately, like he can’t believe Stiles is really there. “And you know furniture’s not really optional.” Derek shrugs again. “Well, it’s Lent right now. Maybe you’re giving up furniture until Easter. I’ll drop it until then.”

“We can buy a couch.”

“After Easter,” he whispers against Derek’s mouth. “You do have a bed, though, right?”

Derek has, in fact, the biggest bed Stiles has ever seen. That’s partly because Derek gave Cora the master suite and he’s in one of the smaller upstairs rooms, so any bed would look pretty big, but his king-sized mattress takes up all the space, sitting squarely in the middle of the room, just about a foot of carpet on any side. He has a dresser, a few shirts on hangers, and an extra pair of boots in his closet, a laptop on the bed, and that’s it, that’s the whole room. Bare walls, no knickknacks.

Derek quickly strips down, kicking his clothes into a corner, and flops on to the bed naked. He looks so good, all smooth, tanned skin on dark blue sheets. There wasn’t a tan line to be seen. Wherever he and Cora had been camping, clearly clothing had been optional. “Wait, did you and Cora hang out together naked?”

“She’s my sister. What do I care if she’s naked?”

“Uh—” Stiles didn’t have any siblings, but he really didn’t think it worked like that for everybody. Maybe it was a wolf thing.

Derek spread his legs and rubbed his thighs, distracting Stiles from anything else. Oh, yeah!—gorgeous naked man laid out in front of him—all night to do whatever he wants to him. Stiles moves to jump on the bed, but stops short when Derek holds up his hand.

“Strip first,” he says.

Stiles considers doing a strip tease, but really can’t imagine that coming off as anything but hilarious and pathetic, so he just goes for efficient and not tripping over his pants.

Naked, Stiles jumps, landing heavily on top of Derek.

“Hi,” he says, reveling in so much bare skin touching skin.

“Hi,” says Derek as he grabs Stiles’ ass with both hands, seemingly just because he can.

Stiles kisses his chin and follows Derek’s jaw with his mouth, to where it dips down to become his throat, and presses a kiss right below where his stubble ends. Then he bites down and sucks _hard_ , reveling in the feel of Derek’s whole body tensing in his arms. Derek left him so marked up last time that Stiles really wants to return the favor. He pulls back, proud of the perfectly round red mark, and watches as it almost instantly becomes perfect pale brown skin again.

“You can’t bruise, can you? Of course you can’t.”

Typical of fucking werewolves. They take a piece of your soul, cover your body with evidence of that, and walk away without a mark on them.

“Your fingerprints cover my body, Stiles,” Derek whispers to him. “I know where each of them is. I just don’t share them with everybody.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Oh.” He kisses the invisible mark lightly. “Good.”

“Yeah, it is good,” Derek says. “It feels like armor.”

 _God_. Stiles doubts anyone would call Derek a romantic, but they’d all be dead wrong. Stiles doesn’t know how he missed it the past few weeks. But then Stiles thinks about Derek with Kate Argent—how he must have treated her, what he said to her, as he fell in love. He thinks of Derek with Paige, Derek with Jennifer Blake, and . . . well, that’s why Stiles missed it. He still doesn’t understand it. How can Derek trust him, believe in what they could have together, when it worked out so badly for him in the past?

What did Stiles do to deserve this?

“Thank you,” is all he can say.

“I want you to fuck me.”

 _Whoa, whoa—_ “You _do_? _”_

“You thought because I’m older and bigger than you, I have to top?”

“Well—”

“I want to fuck you,” Derek says in a gravely voice. “We’re going to have a great time when I fuck you. But Stiles, I can’t _wait_ to feel you inside me.”

Derek sits up and throws his leg over Stiles’ waist so he’s straddling him. He reaches behind him and takes Stiles cock in his hand, guides the tip over his ass, rubs it against his hole.

“I’m desperate for it,” Derek says, stroking Stiles’ cock slowly. “You think you can do it? You think you can fill me up?”

Stiles moans pitifully. He needs to take control of this situation right now or he’s going to fall apart. Taking Derek’s hips in his hands, he flips them over with surprising grace, so Derek’s on his back and Stiles is kneeling in between his legs. He didn’t even displace Derek’s hand from his cock.

“I am going to come right now,” Stiles says, putting his hand over Derek’s and moving it to jerk himself methodically. “I’m going to come all over you and then I’m going to lick it off and eat your ass until you’re begging me to stop. And then I’m going to spread you open with my fingers so you’re stretched to take my cock, but not so wide that you don’t feel—every—inch—and then I’m going to fuck you and I’m going to fill you like you’ve never been filled before. I’m going to fuck you so deep you never stop feeling it.”

Stiles comes at his own dirty talk, shooting ropes of it across Derek’s chest and belly. He closes his eyes and falls back a little, grabbing onto Derek’s legs to keep himself steady. Derek keeps stroking him, with slow, firm squeezes, milking out the last of it. As his head clears, Stiles opens his eyes to Derek smiling at him, pink-cheeked and eyes heavy-lidded.

“You sure are a pretty sight,” Derek says.

Stiles grins. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

His muscles are still post-orgasm weak, so he pushes himself forward and lets gravity drop him on top of Derek. He kisses him leisurely, letting his strength come back. When he pulls away, he realizes he can’t eat his come now, half-dried and cooled, so he runs to the bathroom, grabbing his shirt off the floor in case Derek doesn’t have washcloths. He does, in fact, have matching bath towels, hand towels, and washcloths folded in stacks so nicely that Stiles is sad to sacrifice one under hot water.

“Sorry,” Stiles says when he comes back and wipes Derek’s torso clean of spunk, “that I’m not—”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Derek says. “You don’t have to like eating come. Did you like coming all over me?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, wishing he didn’t sound so bashful about it. “Oh my god, did _you_ like it? Was that demeaning?”

“No,” Derek says, smiling a little.

Stiles lies down in between Derek’s legs, putting Derek’s thighs over his shoulders and settling in. He jerks Derek’s cock and sucks on his balls a little, nosing at his surprisingly soft, good-smelling pubic hair, psyching himself up to start rimming him. Is it weird to use the damp washcloth on Derek’s ass a little? Now that he’s down here Stiles is very aware that asses aren’t built for things going in—they’re built for _things_ coming _out_.

“I’m clean,” Derek says.

“Oh!”— _god_ , sexually transmitted infections. Right. This is a conversation they should have had an hour ago—or, like, two weeks ago. “I figured, I guess—figured you would have said something if you weren’t. I am, too.”

“No, I meant—I mean, I _am_ clean. I have the papers to prove it if—”

“I believe you! I don’t have any papers, but—”

Derek sits up a little. “You haven’t—have you?”

The back of Stiles’ neck heats up, even though Derek isn’t teasing him. If anything, Derek looks and sounds homicidally jealous at the possibility that he has. “No. The farthest I’ve ever gone was with you.”

“Good. Now, what I meant was, I prepared myself for you, for—for you to play with my asshole, Stiles. My ass is clean.”

Stiles spreads Derek’s ass cheeks apart and sure enough, Derek is fucking _pristine_ down there—pale skin, smooth and unblemished, not a hair to be found, around a little pink pucker, smelling as musky, salty good as the rest of him.

“Did you _wax_?” Stiles says before he can stop himself.

After a beat of silence, Derek growls, “Yes.”

“Did you do it yourself? Or did you, like, go to a spa?” Derek is silent. “You did go to a spa, didn’t you?” Derek is glowering at Stiles now, resting his weight on his forearms, looking down at him. “—what else did you do?”

“This is simple courtesy, Stiles.This is why you’re not bottoming.”

“Derek!” Stiles flicks his finger at Derek’s little pink pucker, not expecting Derek to moan like he loved it. “I thought you were desperate to feel me inside you.”

“I _am_ ,” Derek says, and then bursts into laughter, falling flat on his back. “Desperate to feel you in my clean, tidy ass.”

Stiles laughs, too, and hides his face in Derek’s thigh. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice so muffled only a werewolf could understand him. “This is what you get fucking a virgin. I’m a fast learner, I promise.”

“You don’t have to wax. You don’t have much hair down there, anyway.”

“Did you get an enema? Is that—do people actually do that?”

“People do,” Derek says, and after a moment, “I do. I did, this afternoon, uh—but you don’t have to do that, either. I like the feeling. Before you bottom, we’ll take a shower together and I’ll make sure you’re clean. It’s not a big a deal. I just enjoyed—preparing for you.”

Stiles is still kind of stuck on the enema thing. “If you like it, maybe I’ll like it.”

“Maybe.” Derek runs the back of his fingers over Stiles’ cheek.  “If you—helped me, I’d like that.”

 _Why_ is that so _hot?_ Stiles nods. “Okay.”

Realizing he has the element of surprise, Stiles ducks forward and swipes his tongue over Derek’s ass and then blows on the wet stripe. From what he’s read, Stiles can’t really do this wrong so he just goes for it, licking and sucking and biting a little, whatever strikes him as a good idea, and Derek rewards him with the most amazing squirming and little noises he’s ever heard.

Derek hands him a hefty bottle of lube, hardly used, if at all, saying, “Fingers now.”

Stiles drizzles some onto his first two fingers and snaps the top closed again. He uses his thumb to spread the slick around and ends up coating all three fingers thoroughly. Rather too late, as he’s running his thumb over Derek’s pucker, he realizes topping is something he should have prepared for a little bit, too, not that he thought Derek would be interested in bottoming—if Stiles’ nails were any longer, sticking them up Derek’s ass would have been a very precarious process. As it is, he’s only mildly terrified as he presses inside. Derek moans and shifts his hips.

“Okay?” Stiles says.

Derek nods. “Deeper.”

Stiles pushes his thumb all the way in and then fucks Derek with it with slow, steady strokes, getting him used to the girth. Then he replaces it with his index finger, adding that length.

“Christ, you have long fingers,” Derek groans.

“Okay?” Stiles says again.

“Good,” Derek corrects him. “I’d look at your hands and get distracted thinking about this. It’s very good.”

He can do better than that. Stiles has never managed to give himself a very satisfying prostate massage, but he did _find_ his own prostate, so he knows what he’s doing as he drags his finger over the front-facing side of Derek’s passage, grinning as Derek jerks and quivers under his hands. He rubs over it a few times and then brings his second finger in beside the first. He’s debating whether to bring his ring finger into this party now, or bring his thumb back, when Derek says, “Enough. Your cock now.”

“Um,” Stiles starts because he isn’t stretched half as wide as he’ll need to be, but Derek continues.

“I can handle a lot of pain.”

“Just because you can handle it doesn’t mean—”

“I like it. I want to feel you.”

“Okay.” Stiles sits up on his knees, moving Derek’s legs up so his ankles are sitting on his shoulders. Stiles wasn’t sure if that would work, but Derek is plenty flexible enough. Then he remembers—“I should use a condom, right?”

“Um, I know gay porn makes it seem like now’s the time to think about that, but you can get most of the same STDs during oral sex that you can during anal. If one of us is lying about being clean, the transmission ship has already sailed.”

“Oh!” says Stiles, feeling like an idiot. “Right.”

Derek sits up, folding in half to bring his face close to Stiles’ and kissing him. “But I’m not lying. And neither are you.”

Stiles squeezes an excessive amount of lube over his cock and spreads it around. He aligns his cock head with Derek’s winking asshole and presses in until Derek’s pucker closes around the flared base of the head and— _oh!_ —Stiles has never felt anything like this. It’s so hot and so tight and he’s _inside_ Derek. He _knows_ he came less than an hour ago, which he’d really thought would let him last a while the second time here, but he’s already so close to the edge.

“Don’t worry about it,” Derek says, grappling for his hand. Stiles meets him palm to palm and threads their fingers together. “You can come, and get hard again inside me, and come again. This is so good, just being close to you. You can’t screw this up. Okay?” 

Those words, and Derek’s warm, steady gaze, work like magic to make Stiles calm and sure and ready to give Derek the fucking _love making_ of his life. Stiles takes a deep breath and pushes the rest of his cock inside, until he bottoms out, every inch of him being squeezed hot and tight by Derek. Stiles holds Derek’s waist for leverage and pulls out—and pushes back in.

“Like that?” Derek nods furiously, squeezing his eyes shut. “You sure?”

Derek claps both his hands over Stiles’ and squeezes. “It’s been years since I’ve done this and it’s never—this is more than—I can’t—”

Stiles leans over him, pressing Derek’s knees to his shoulders, and kisses him. “You can,” he says, thrusting in again, running along Derek’s prostate if his aim is right. Derek lets out a keening noise and bites Stiles’ jaw _hard._ “We can. We’re doing it.”

Stiles does come way too soon, right after that, but he doesn’t really lose his erection and he just keeps moving as he gets ramped up again and brings Derek to this beautiful, delirious headspace where he can’t seem to do anything but touch Stiles and whisper tender gibberish until he _erupts—_ it’s the only word for it—releasing more come than Stiles has ever seen in his life, and passes out. It’s a little weird to finish inside Derek’s lax body, but he’s so close, almost dizzy with it, so he just lets go.

Then he pulls out, brings Derek’s legs down so he’s laying flat, and curls up against to him. Derek wakes up enough to throw his arm around Stiles’ shoulders and press a kiss to his head.

They both sleep for a while. Stiles wakes up to the room bright as day some time later. He dims the lights as he goes to pee, plug his phone into Derek’s charger, and get a fresh warm washcloth to clean Derek up as best he can. It’s hopeless, though; the come dried like glue in very sensitive places. Stiles wakes him up with kisses and says, “Shower time,” as Derek opens his eyes narrowly. He hauls him upright by the arm and Derek moans pitifully. “Come on, you big baby. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

Derek staggers like a zombie all the way to the bathroom, but he lets Stiles put him under the stream of hot water, holds his arms up and spreads his legs as Stiles rubs what has to be Cora’s sweet pea-scented body wash all over him. Stiles cleans himself a little less attentively and then switches places with Derek to rinse off.

Derek’s awake by the time they get out and towel dry. Stiles can tell when Derek presses him against the bathroom door and kisses him thoroughly.

“You have homework?”

“No,” Stiles says, even though he totally does and a couple classes are going to kick his ass tomorrow. From Derek’s frown, he knows Stiles is lying, but he doesn’t say anything. Stiles is grateful for that. His dad isn’t going to let him have another night like this for a while, at least not until he turns eighteen and this isn’t illegal anymore, so he wants to take full advantage of it.

He continues, “I don’t know if I can come again,” though because Derek is beautiful and rubbing up against him and his cock is taking just the barest tingle of interest in him.

“Do you mind if we make out a little?”

Stiles grins against Derek’s mouth. “No,” he says, and they go back to bed and do just that.

Eventually they’re just lying together, touching and breathing the same air, when Derek says, “Why did you think I was kissing you so much if not because I—I mean, because I _wanted_ to. Why else would I kiss you?”

“I thought you were—making a point.”

“What point?”

“Various points. Like— _don’t get hurt_ and _feel better_.”

Derek glares at him.

“I know! I’m an idiot!”

“What, did you think I was kissing everybody to make a point? Make a point here, make a point there?”

“No!” He hadn’t even considered that possibility. He would have been heartbroken if he’d found out Derek was kissing other people. What is _wrong_ with him? “I just thought we were in a sexual—exclusive—friendship.”

“You know what most people call that?”

“I just couldn’t accept that you’d want _that_ —with me.”

“I guess I can’t judge. I knew you were attracted to me, but I thought . . .”

“What?”

“I figured you were a horny teenager who wouldn’t say no even if you didn’t like me very much. I was hoping I could bring you around, but—”

“I love you.”

Derek’s mouth snaps shut and he smiles slowly. “I love you, too.”

“Okay, so, forget before. We know the score now.”

Stiles runs the tip of his nose down the bridge of Derek’s and then brings their mouths together—and this?—this kiss is a promise.

And when Derek pads barefoot into the kitchen to Stiles making breakfast, that kiss was _good morning_ (and good morning, and good morning). And when it starts pouring rain and Derek brought him a rain poncho before practice, that kiss was _you’re the best_. And when Stiles won’t stop talking about Star Trek during training, those kisses were _shut up, this is boring_. And after Stiles makes him watch three episodes of the Original Series, those kisses, he can only assume, are _okay, I was an idiot_.

And years from then every kiss still means _yours_ and _mine_ and _yes_.

DONE.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you find a typo or other monkey business in this fic? I know it can feel rude or pushy or just weird to tell authors about that stuff, so [I made a form where you can report it anonymously](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1--1RxNJyJCWZPaRyBeV6jtmUrcEI0zuUkDvoJoA6A_A/viewform). Thank you in advance for making a better reading experience for future readers.


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